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4 hours ago
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It’s delightful that Martin Clunes has won so many plaudits for his performance in this year’s Wuthering Heights, alongside Margot Robbie’s Cathy and Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff. He plays Cathy’s drunk but generous, cruel yet humorous father in a part that could easily have drifted into the background. But he makes such an impression that the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw reckons he “pretty much pinches the whole film”.
It’s not as if Clunes hasn’t brushed shoulders with the Hollywood A-list before. You might remember him as Richard Burbage, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes and Judi Dench, in 1998’s Shakespeare in Love – a role with added resonance given that his father, Alec Clunes, who died when Clunes was eight, was a distinguished Shakespearean actor. Other roles include 1992’s Carry On Columbus (the last ever Carry On); 1994’s Staggered (which he also directed), in which he wakes up naked on a remote Scottish island after a stag do gone wrong; and 1999’s Hunting Venus, where he reunites with his former on-screen flatmate Neil Morrissey, as a washed-up 80s New Romantic, sporting a flopped quiff that puts even A Flock of Seagulls to shame.
Perhaps, though, it’s his next role that might further set him aside from being “television’s most affable grump” and into Michael Sheen territory, as he plays the eponymous disgraced BBC presenter in Channel 5’s The Downfall of Huw Edwards. Going from the promo pic, he makes for an extremely convincing Edwards – apart from, perhaps predictably, the ears.
Clunes is here this week to take your questions as he promotes his latest film, the British comedy Mother’s Pride – a tale of a failing pub whose fortunes change when it enters the Great British Beer awards, starring James Buckley from The Inbetweeners and that bloke (Jonno Davies) who played the CGI monkey in that bonkers Robbie Williams biopic.
So, what to ask Clunes? Maybe you remember him as one of the beer-downing, song-singing public-school rugby boys from Harry Enfield’s Television Programme (it was Enfield who gave him his big break). Perhaps you’re a fan of his travel and nature documentaries? Or maybe he just feels like an old friend while you doomscroll through the channels: Have I Got News For You on U&Dave; downing a Stella or two with Neil Morrissey in Men Behaving Badly on U&Gold; or scowling and clinically offending half of Cornwall as the tetchy GP in Doc Martin on ITV3.
Please post your questions by 6pm this Wednesday, 4 March, and we’ll publish his answers in Film & Music on Friday 13 March.
