In the sequence near the end of the film before Sid James is about to go on stage in the play The Mating Season his dresser says she 's been offered a job on the new bond film You Only Live Twice. This is wrong because this is in 1976 and you only live twice was made in 1966 or 1967, probably the film The spy who loved me would of been more likely. Bad research here, when Sid James goes on stage he dies this was a true incident. The dresser before he dies on stage writes a note and leaves presumably to work on the film. This was an interesting film but how true it was in general is open to question. The dresser is introduced at the start of the film when Sid James is filming Carry on Cleo. The main plot of the film is Sid James affair with Barbara Windsor.

I have seen a few documentaries about the Carry On films, and the affair between the adorable bubbly blonde and lovable dirty laughing git is often mentioned, and this drama is a pretty good depiction. It is 1964 at Pinewood Studios, Sidney "Sid" James (Goodnight Mister Tom's Geoffrey Hutchings) is making a successful film series, the Carry On films, along with actors Kenneth Williams (Charlie and the Chcoloate Factory's Adam Godley), Bernard Bresslaw (Steve Speirs), Joan Sims (Chrissie Cotterill), Charles Hawtrey (Hugh Walters) and Kenneth Connor (Derek Howard), and director Gerald Thomas (David McAllister). After completing Carry On Spying (which James was not in), Sid meets newcomer Barbara Windsor (Samantha Spiro), and he is instantly attracted to her. Over the years Sid pretty much pursues her, and she is constantly refusing to have any kind of affair with him. Eventually though "Babs" gives in to her feelings for him and allows him one night of passion, although it was probably more than that. The last film they made in each other's company was Carry On Dick, and just before the making of Carry On Emmannuelle (which Babs refused to be in, considered it distasteful), Sid James tragically died on stage. The final sequence where Kenny Williams and Babs (played by herself!) go into Sid's old trailer is quite heartfelt. Also starring Maria Charles as Mrs. Hawtrey, Jacqueline Defferary as Sally and Kenneth MacDonald as Eddie. Spiro is really convincing as Babs, Hutching's does alright as James, and the show is almost stolen by the almost spot-on impression of Williams by Godley. A good drama not just to see a depiction of this real story, but to get an idea of behind-the-scenes on the Carry On films. Good!

This is an insult to Sid James. Its not fair that he is being publicised like this. Sid was a great man who gave laughter to Millions of people this is no way to treat Sid. The man is dead. He cannot Defend himself. I wonder what Barbara Windsor thought about this. It is worser in my opinion than Carry on England. I am pretty certain that they didn't have sex during the making of Carry on Girls.Its a load of rubbish. I wonder what Valerie James must have thought about this.I think that whoever thought of this film is sick in the head. There is no proof that Sid and Babs slept together during the making of Girls.And another thing Bernie was not in Henry!!!!. This is a sad pointless documentary type film. Its just wrong Joan Sims even said so herself that Sid and his family should be left alone.0/10

The opening half of this film dramatising the affair between two of Britain's best and best-loved comedians, Sid James and Barbara Windsor, is a wonderful marriage of form and content, and a lesson to anyone who dares to make period dramas. From the cheeky title and CARRY ON-style credits, we know we're in for a treat that will not betray its subjects with deadly respectability.This half is filmed like a CARRY ON, with the central romance between Sid and Babs diffused by innuendo-laden bits of business featuring Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey et al. There is one stunning shot at the beginning where the vast Roman ampitheatre through which a soldier walks is revealed to be a tiny model, pointing to the themes of reality and appearance that will be the film's theme, as well as the economic reality of these films' production.Sid's life in this half is played like a CARRY ON farce, full of repetition, coitus interruptus, double entendres, comedy gangsters and buxom ladies locked in bathrooms. The general verdict on CARRY ONs is that they are an assembly line churning out shoddy products of ever decreasing quality, concerned only with adolescent titillation (this is not my view - HENRY and CLEO at least are great films, while KHYBER is the greatest of all British satires, and the equal of Bunuel); so treating the lives of these people who must subsume their own personalities in their screen personae (even the sex scene is mediated through cinematic apparatus), locked in an evermore limiting labyrinth of personal need and public status is true at least to public perception (behind which, presumably, the filmmakers wish to delve).The lines and jokes are fruity and excellent, the sets deliciously gaudy, the re-enactments priceless, the chronology a little wobbly, the acting a triumph (Samantha Spiro as Babs is so winning and moving she makes me totally reevaluate a figure I'd previously considered fairly margainal), but, best of all, it shows that farce, and especially CARRY ONs, have an emotional basis denied by its detractors.The screenwriter doesn't quite believe it either though, and this fertile approach is soon abandoned as the film gets more serious, tragic, and it seeks an appropriate mode to express this, fixing on a fatal melange of social realism and middle-class Rattiganisms (so as not to alienate the film's prime-time audience). The subversion of genre that was the first half (and subverting genre and its conservative functions was what CARRY ONs were all about) becomes a conventional biopic, robbing the subjects of their breezy singularity. Yes it's all very sad and desparing and tragic, yes the recreation of a shabby 70s Britain at the fag-end of both the entertainment industry and British society itself is expertly realised, but so is Merchant Ivory. There are lines of dialogue, which, without irony, could have come straight from an Alan Bennett parody. The despair of Williams is frequently alluded to, but to anyone unfamiliar with his story somewhat obscured. The hilarious parody of Burton and Taylor that characterises Sid and Babs' early relationship becomes sadly literal as we go on. You certainly wouldn't know why these cheaply-made music hall quickies remain astonishingly popular and vibrant today, while their more respectable peers lie in cobwebbed vaults. After such a fun start, then, a bit of a shame.