Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story
BBC-2 | BBC Two | Release Date: May 28, 2008
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyAdam Markovitz
Season 1 Review: The plot--based on a true story--drags, but Walters is a hoot as a prig who thinks she can stave off the swingin' '60s with a wagging finger. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara
Season 1 Review: A lively, thought-provoking and often humorous quasi-biopic of a real-life crusader in which there are no angels, or devils either, just a nation in the midst of change for which not everyone is prepared. Read full review
80
Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker
Season 1 Review: Brilliant acting propels this slight satire about Mary Whitehouse. Read full review
80
The New York TimesAnita Gates
Season 1 Review: The script, by Amanda Coe, has a dexterous sense of fun. Read full review
80
VarietyBrian Lowry
Season 1 Review: As played by Julie Walters, Filth is a surprisingly affectionate and sympathetic portrait of a character who easily could have been presented as a priggish scold. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman
Season 1 Review: Screenwriter Amanda Coe is to be credited not only for developing such rich characterizations, but also for the delicacy of the show's satiric point of view. Read full review
70
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray
Season 1 Review: Yet for all the gentle ridicule heaped on Walters' character in Filth, her Mary is closer to a three-dimensional figure than Whitehouse's nemesis, BBC head Sir Hugh Greene (Hugh Bonneville). Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalDorothy Rabinowitz
Season 1 Review: Clearly, the creators of Filth (Amanda Coe, writer, Andy De Emmony, director) had their problems settling down to a comfortable tone for this figure who was, after all, famous entirely for her career on behalf of censorship. Julie Walters, who portrays her with grand and ebullient sympathy, shows evidence of no similar problems. Read full review
60
Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
Season 1 Review: Walters makes the movie seem like more than it is. She gives us a fully dimensional woman--an art teacher--who is idealistic, self-righteous, humorless, God-fearing, affectionate toward her students, driven, and not any one of those qualities to a great extreme. Read full review
60
L.A. WeeklyRobert Abele
Season 1 Review: Filth too often comes off like a strained attempt at reversing the dynamic of a Marx Brothers movie, with Whitehouse the silly, charming agitator and Greene the insufferable aesthete foil with steam blowing out of his ears. Read full review
50
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: Rather than balance, what you get from Filth is a gratingly smug superiority that mocks both sides while failing to make any point of its own. Read full review
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