Hindsight has shown that Hughie Green (Trevor Eve) was a patently insincere person cultivating a morally upright public facade while pursuing an immoral existence in private. But this representation does not acknowledge that he was one of British television's biggest stars from the late Fifties right through to the late Seventies. OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS was a guaranteed ratings winner on a Monday night for Rediffusion (later Thames Television), providing the springboard for nascent talents such as Les Dawson. Tony Basgallop's script concentrates primarily on his off-stage career - despite cultivating a morally upright public persona, he was too self-interested to be an effective parent, treating his children Christopher (Christopher Gillman-Wells) and Linda (Megan Convery) with acute disdain. Although fond of frequent sexual encounters, Green basically disliked women - not only his wife but all of his partners. The film suggests that this was chiefly due to a traumatic experience in childhood when he caught his mother in flagrante delicto with another man, while his father (Ian Cairns) was reduced to tears. The film makes much of Green's tempestuous relationship with producer Jess Yates (Mark Benton), another star of mid-Seventies television with a disreputable private life. Yates produced Green's Yorkshire Television quiz Show THE SKY'S THE LIMIT which ran for four years with a regular Friday night slot. The two of them regularly quarrelled; it was obviously a conflict between two incredible egotists. Eve recreates Green's complex personality in a highly effective manner - bringing out the contrast between the affable on screen personality and the complex person off-screen. The other roles are mostly colorless, although Danny Webb gives an effectively greasy portrayal of News of the World journalist Noel Botham, perpetually on the lookout for a salacious story relating to Green's private life.
Review of Hughie Green, Most Sincerely
