What was the point of Burton and Taylor?

Watching Burton and Taylor (BBC4, Monday) I felt a bit like I do when I go to the theatre — or, more often, when friends have kindly taken me to the theatre. ‘Are you enjoying it?’ someone will ask. ‘Oh, yes. Very much,’ I’ll lie. For the truth is, no matter how well done it all is, I’d still so much rather be doing other things. Catching up with the latest episode of the infinitely more gripping The Returned (Channel 4, Sunday), for example.

At the end I found myself wondering ‘Why?’ Not just ‘Why didn’t I switch off earlier?’ and ‘Why couldn’t I maybe have chosen to review that David Starkey series on royalty and music instead?’ but, most pertinently, ‘Why did they bother making this presumably quite expensive biopic?’ or ‘Why couldn’t it go on letting us enjoy Burton and Taylor as they were in our heads: as remote, unattainable fantasy figures defining a Seventies movie-star glamour the like of which we shall never see again?’