I cannot wait to watch tonight's ‘Burton and Taylor,’ the 90-minute BBC4 TV biopic documenting the final reunion between the glamorous Cleopatra co-stars Richard Burtonand Elizabeth Taylor, depicted by Dominic West and TLC’s favourite luvvvie Helena Bonham-Carter.
Known for their particularly turbulent relationship, this drama focuses on when the couple, who were married and divorced to each other twice, performed together, disastrously and for the final time, in the 1983 critically-slated Broadway revival of Nöel Coward’s ‘Private Lives.’ Despite being in different relationships at this time, Liz and Dick’s on-going, mutually obsessive, alcohol-fuelled love you/loathe you, can’t live with you/can’t live without you lovelife saw an exhausted Liz check in to the Betty Ford clinic straight after the show closed. Writer William Ivory understood the his two star protaganists well, "Burton and Taylor were addicted to more than alcohol… they were addicted to each other.”
Elizabeth received Richard’s final love letter to her later that year, three days before he died. The letter was buried with the iconic actress when she passed away in 2011.
'Burton and Taylor' is on tonight at 9PM, BBC4.