Sheridan (ITV) made for uneasy viewing, despite its light format - review

Given the lightness of its format, Sheridan (ITV) made for uneasy viewing. It comprised an hour of songs sung by Sheridan Smith, covers and show tunes, interspersed with the gentlest of interviews by Alexander Armstrong, like a hybrid of Stars in their Eyes and Life Stories. Ostensibly to promote an album she's recorded, it had the sense of being a relaunch, and in this it was not wholly successful. 

At her best Smith is an actor with fine comic timing, seemingly incapable of caricature, able to convey hinterlands of vulnerability with a glance or half-smile. In The Royle Family, Gavin & Stacey and Two Pints of Lager & a Packet of Crisps, she played women you laughed along with but also liked and believed in. She showed us that she could sing in the West End musical of Legally Blonde. In the biopic Cilla, she proved it, and her portrayal of the Liverpudlian star was a triumph. At only 36 she has an MBE and shelves full of awards. 

Yet by her own admission the past couple of years have been difficult. Last year her performances in West End show Funny Girl grew erratic, and she was accused of drunkenness. Her father died of cancer. She lashed out at the press. There was the usual spectacle of the press hastening to tear down someone they had built up, all the grimmer for its whiff of snobbery. A woman from Yorkshire who didn't go to drama school had come up to London and overreached. At times in this programme, with her hair back-combed and eyes smudged with make-up, Smith projected a kind of manic energy.