Paul Merton on Hollywood (?)

Paul Merton is to front a series of documentaries for the beeb to coincide with the 100 year anniversary of Hollywood industry. The series will focus on the influence of early cinema on today's movies, and in particular on comedy.


Paul Merton is a genius, and I'll watch anything he does. I haven't seen his previous work on cinema, 'Paul Merton looks at Alfred Hitchcock', and 'Silent Clowns', but now I want to. The Hitchcock piece focusses on the late great's early British work, a body of films sadly much ignored. The work that would come to define Hitchcock was so quintessentially Hollywood, many people forget he was English. Watch The Lodger: London Fog, Blackmail, 39 Steps, or Sabotage, and the great man's status is cemented beyond the familiarity of Psycho or Rebecca or Rear Window.


It should be interesting to see what Merton makes of Hollywood's early days, if he goes beyond the mythologising and cliche, whether he takes on the industrial wrangling as well as the sparkly stars and scandal.