Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story

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.

The script, by Amanda Coe, has a dexterous sense of fun.

Brilliant acting propels this slight satire about Mary Whitehouse.

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.

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).

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.

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.