This is a very well-made, well-acted film which gives an enjoyable introduction to the Mary Whitehouse phenomenon. While showing her point of view it also manages to satirise her blinkered self-righteousness. Her pretty little English village, nestling in green pastures, is home to at least one wife-beater and a gay teenage couple; Mrs W is so concerned with the evils of television she fails to see the real world around her, possibly a comment on what TV does to us all.I have to admit that after over thirty years of being told what I should and should not see on TV and films (she started a Rambo scare in the 80's, the world would be filled with young men programmed to become indiscriminate killers after watching Sly Stallone) I was actually relieved when the woman finally left us in 2001. For me, she epitomised all I detest about petty-minded interference in other people's lives. Her main target - the BBC - is funded by *all* tax-payers and licence holders, it does not exist to serve the favoured few who know what is best for everyone else.Note also the argument these people always use: the effect on other people, never themselves; they are right-thinking and incorruptible but the rest of us are depraved children who cannot be trusted to be exposed to adult issues and behaviour; freedom of expression must be reserved for enlightened members of society.In the event Whitehouse had no influence at all on the development of popular culture in Britain. All she did was stoke a debate which could be trotted out every so often and give her some media exposure (Julie Walters gets her sweet condescending smile off to a T). On the evidence of this film, all she achieved was the destruction of a dynamic and creative head of the BBC who, for all his faults, had what Whitehouse totally lacked - a zest for life - whether it took the form of a game of cricket or a pretty secretary.

Mary Whitehouse is a Midlands housewife with a perfectly respectable family and village life. Whenever she hears the girls at school talking about premarital sex following a discussion programme on the subject on the BBC it turns out to be only one of many impacts that she perceives the BBC's output to be having on the morality and good fibre of British society. As a result of several letters, Whitehouse forms a small group to challenge the filth flooding into the homes of millions of families on a nightly basis and quickly finds her campaign getting national attention and becoming a thorn in the side of the more progressive Sir Hugh Greene, Director General of the BBC.I'm no fan of Mary Whitehouse nor of censorship. Neither do I believe that the decline of standards in society are entirely down to the depiction thereof in the media. However this is not the same as just saying that anyone can broadcast whatever they want without any sort of checks, balances or controls in place. Many people will share these views and agree that, while adults should be treated as adults, children should be protected and unsecured flows of media cannot contain the same content as media streams that are filtered as to audience (ie ratings, timings etc). Filth also thinks this I believe and it structures its telling very well. Whitehouse is not painted as a crazy old woman at first but rather a perfectly reasonable person concerned by what she sees on television and the effect it appears to be having directly on teenagers but gradually she is revealed to be just as frustrated with changes in society and that perhaps the BBC is just a focal point for her frustrations.The script does this really well and the delivery is gradual so that it is clear without being obvious. I did worry that this would just be a 90 minute kicking of Whitehouse but it did do her justice because it showed the good elements of her as well as the bad (of which it must be said there are more). Julie Walters didn't totally convince me in the title role but this was because she was just a little too much like Mrs Merton for me. However her performance does back up the gradual nature of the script again where it could have been easy to play her as simply a batty old lady stuck in the past and nothing more. I thought Armstrong did well alongside her while Bonneville is light and fun in his BBC role.Filth may have a terrible title card (a bike going over a dog turd) but as a film it is actually very good. The tone is light but not to the point of easy mockery; the script allows for Whitehouse to be shown in a fair light – thus good and bad are on display – while the performances are mostly good and fitting the film. You my not have agreed with her or you may lament her loss, but either way Filth is a fair and entertaining film that is a job well done.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Early sixties Britain is still a fairly innocent place and Mary Whitehouse (Julie Walters), a suburban local art teacher and church-goer, lives a dainty little English existence in her quiet, dainty little Midlands village. But she becomes outraged by what she sees as declining standards on British TV, with more regular, casual bad language, sex talk and violence. The film portrays her real life crusade to 'clean up TV', bringing her into conflict with Hugh Greene (Hugh Bonneville) the new Programmes Commissioner at the BBC, who's moving with the times more and showing programmes more suited to the changing social attitudes.It's interesting to note what a puritanical society we used to be not really so long ago, especially when we comment on the Americans and their prudish standards they still have on mainstream TV. Maybe it's the age I've been raised in but I've always been one for freedom of expression and mature adults being allowed to see what they want, so Mary Whitehouse was never a character that was going to agree with me. But even if you think her campaigns were misguided, you have to admire her determination and conviction of her will, which this very well made TV drama has portrayed.The main thing that drives it is two superb lead performances. In the title role, Walters gives it her all as the quaint English lady with an unwavering moral compass who is forced to come to terms with society's changing ideals, attitudes, morals and beliefs while leading her campaign and similarly Bonneville is also great as the arrogant TV chief who bites off more than he can chew with the little guy.Both the characters are very well written too, along with the script, which really gets you involved with the story, which is engaging and enthralling but refreshingly humorous, too, although in a manner risqué enough, ironically, to get Mrs Whitehouse up in arms about. ****

It is a strange experience, seeing family members being portrayed by actors, and events for which one has a well-established store of mental pictures being re-presented through the director's eyes. It was never going to be entertaining. It was hard to see Ernest's trauma (he never fully recovered) of the road suicide being played out for a casual audience. After a lifetime of watching vitriolic attacks on Mary, we inevitably found ourselves watching and waiting for the 'catch'. But in general, the play was kind to Mary and hard on Greene, and I can see that the tussle between them is a perfect dramatic vehicle for a romp through the prejudices of the baby boomer generation, given spice by the addition of a relatively serious take on Mary's aims which the BBC was so reluctant to afford her at the time. I can't comment on the production values, which had at the start a bit of an 'acorn antiques' flavour. The bicycle-riding, dowdy, local gossipy lady is a Walters 'character' which bears little relationship to Mary's life or character. Her moment of snapping and snarling at the kissing couple in the car was absolutely unlike her. The portrayal of the three abstentious sons at the party (the eldest was married and had long left home by then, and wasn't there) was an irritating but unimportant misrepresentation. Mary's seriousness of intention, however, does emerge when portrayed on the platform, and some of her 'charisma' also is conveyed. The main flaw is the total omission of the fact that Mary was portrayed as an art teacher. Yes, she was an art teacher, but had been given responsibility for moral and sex education in the school, at a time when such an activity had no road map. It was a pioneering role which she had been asked to play. It was concerns arising from serious, timetabled discussion which drove her to deal with pressures on the kids from the outside world, rather than a personal, (Intrusive?) interest in the lives of her pupils. This has the effect of emphasising the common perception that she was a self-appointed moral guardian; at the start, she was not!