When Harvey Met Bob (2010)

Recommended

UK/Ireland

Television Film

Director: Nicholas Renton

Writer: Joe Dunlop

Cinematographer: Owen McPolin

Composers: Hugh Drumm, Stephen Rennicks

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Ian Hart, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Paul Rhys, Padraic Delaney, Chris Dunlop, Andrew Whipp

Though some of the directorial flourishes jar a little, and the script’s failure to mention a number of key figures is somewhat bizarre, this British-Irish co-production, a fictionalised depiction of Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith’s momentous achievement in organising the 1985 Live Aid concert, which was put on in order to raise money for the starving millions in Ethiopia, proves to be, thanks in the main to the outstanding perfomance of Gleeson as the hirsute Dublin rocker Geldof, a thoroughly compelling and surprisingly very affecting film. Iain.Stott