The Importance of Being Oscar
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Despite a stream of dramas and documentaries on all aspects of the life of Oscar Wilde, the playwright continues to elude all attempts to paint the defining portrait. Last year Rupert Everett wrote and starred in a moving film about Wilde’s tragic last years in France, but the latest BBC2 documentary (20 April) concentrated on Wilde’s rise rather than his fall.

It concluded at the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest when the Marquess of Queensberry presented Wilde with a bouquet of rotting vegetables and a card addressing him as “posing as a somdomite [sic]”, and began with an actor speaking lines from De Profundis, Wilde’s harrowing letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, Queensberry’s son, written from gaol and describing himself as having “summoned the imagination of my century”.

As a straightforward documentary, The Importance of Being Oscar covered the ground admirably. It was produced by Franny Moyle who wrote a well-received biography of Constance Wilde – and his relationship with women was particularly interestingly addressed.