Ruth Negga captured the essence of fame as Shirley Bassey

TV Review: Ruth Negga was in star-making form as Shirley Bassey in the BBC's biopic Shirley, successfully capturing the essence of fame.

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Negga as a highly convincing Shirley Bassey (BBC2)

Someone at the BBC must have a very long list headed Famous Women Biopics. They’ve been working their way through it at a fair rate of knots – can’t wait for Cheryl, complete with cloakroom fight scene – and the latest to follow in the footsteps of Hattie, Margot et al was Shirley (BBC2), the rags-to-riches tale of Tiger Bay diva Shirley Bassey.
As a biopic, it followed a pretty familiar path. Poor girl gets discovered; gets famous; suffers scandal because she’s a single mum; turns out to have a dodgy taste in men; and so on. But none of this mattered, thanks to a star turn from Ruth Negga as Bassey in a performance that shone from the screen. She simply was Bassey from the moment the first (mimed) vocal roared from her lungs.
Add in sterling support from Charlie Creed-Miles as the man who discovered her and Lesley Sharp as Bassey’s mother, and Shirley successfully disguised that, in truth, here was a story that could have done with a few more plot twists. What you got was Negga in star-making form, capturing the essence of fame. Her life in turmoil, she prepared to step out on stage with the words: ‘Right, let’s go and be Shirley Bassey.’