None better than George Best

A TV drama which looks beyond George Best's celestial skills, and towards his family, throws new light on the star's life, says Gerard Gilbert

(BBC)

Think of George Best and what comes to mind? The shaggy-maned Manchester United footballer dancing insolently past defenders? Or a Carnaby Street-era dandy pouring a champagne-saucer pyramid to the delight of interchangeable mini-skirted dolly birds? Or perhaps the rheumy-eyed older Best – a few years before he died of liver failure – telling Michael Parkinson that, although he knew he had wasted his talent, he wouldn't change a thing about his life?

Playboy, drunkard, genius.... All these things are present in the form of archive footage in a new BBC2 drama, Best – His Mother's Son, but, as the title suggests, this is no straightforward biopic of one of the world's most naturally gifted footballers. Instead the drama focuses on Best's family in Belfast, and, in particular, his mother Ann, who, under the pressure of her son's celebrity, also succumbed to drink addiction. She died from alcohol-related heart problems at the age of 54.

"George is before my time so that the only image of him I had was the tabloid stuff about the drinking," says Terry Cafolla, the Northern Irish dramatist who was commissioned to find a fresh angle on Best's story. "The biggest shock to me was finding out his mother was an alcoholic. And the biggest shock after that was that she hadn't touched a drop until her mid-forties and in the space of 10 years she drank herself to death."

The idea for the film came originally from its Emmy-winning (for Maxwell) producer and director, Colin Barr. "I'd known that he'd been an alcoholic and judged endlessly for that – and I'd heard the anecdotes and knew as much as anybody else did," says Barr. "But, given what we know about alcoholism now, it seemed odd that people had no idea what made him the way he was."

Best – His Mother's Son concentrates on George Best's glory years between 1966 and 1973. He had left Belfast for Manchester in 1961, as a 15-year-old apprentice at Matt Busby's post-Munich Disaster United squad, but his celebrity status as "the fifth Beatle" really took off in some vintage European Cup nights climaxing in the historic 1968 victory over Benfica at Wembley.

"He was the first of so many different things", says Barr. "His story has a lot of things to say about the celebrity obsessed, publicity-driven culture we have now."

"He was the forerunner for people like Beckham or Ronaldo", says Terry Cafolla, Bafta-nominated for his 2003 drama about sectarian division, Holy Cross. "But without the sort of support and assistance that they would have."

And it wasn't just Best who was left unprotected from the celebrity circus. Best's family home in Belfast was almost constantly besieged by fans and reporters – the phone ringing all the time, while journalists banged on the windows and shouted through the letterbox. It is perhaps no surprise that Ann Best, a good-humoured woman who had never before touched a drop of alcohol, was soon fortifying herself with cooking sherry. Ann is played with sad-eyed intensity by Michelle Fairley.

"I think this is predominantly the story of a family and how they coped with the decline of their mother," says Fairley, the Olivier Award-nominated actress from County Antrim who is currently appearing alongside Andrea Corr, lead singer of The Corrs, in Brian Friel's Dancing At Lughnasa at London's Old Vic. "This is the tale of how Ann Best coped or, rather, didn't cope with everything that was happening in her life and her son's life. Ann's alcoholism was a by-product."

"I've never offered a part to anyone as quickly as I offered this part to Michelle," says Barr. "She has such a deep understanding of the character and the place. "Casting George Best however was a slightly trickier proposition.

"Physically I really needed someone who had that dark hair, blue-eyed thing. That was vital. But there's no point getting that and then not getting someone who has real depth to the way they act." In the event, Barr chose the 26-year-old Tom Payne, best known for his work on Skins and BBC1's school saga Waterloo Road.

"Tom is not one of those swaggering young male actors who already behaves as if they are a star," says Barr. "He feels quite vulnerable and quite shy in some respects. And one of the key characteristics for Best for me was his shyness."

"There are a lot of things about George that people don't necessarily realise," says Payne himself. "He was only my height – about 5ft 8in; he was quite a small wiry man. But also he was very shy; people always see him as the ladies' man, going out and getting drunk and all that stuff, but, speaking to people who actually knew him at the time – I spoke to Mike Summerbee (the ex-Manchester City footballer) who was a mate of his, and to Michael Parkinson – they said that Best never really invited any of that attention; he never approached people, everybody came to him. "

There was one sort of approach that Best shied away above all else – that he eluded as skilfully as he slipped the attentions of any soccer defence – and that was any involvement in Northern Ireland's rapidly deteriorating political situation. "One of the most interesting things about George was that, despite coming from a place where politics and religion seem to be at the centre of everything, he always managed to stay above that," says Cafolla. "Even so, there were a few times when he did get pulled in. When he was in Manchester there was a story that he had given money to the Democratic Unionist Party – Ian Paisley's party back then. He hadn't, but there was threats against his life."

Indeed, like many viewers I suspect, I realised I didn't have a clue as to what side of Ulster's sectarian divide the Best family belonged – that they were in fact Protestant. "When the film starts it was before the Troubles and George is just a kid from Belfast doing really well," says Cafolla. "By the time we end things have changed so much in Belfast that he's now a 'Protestant kid' and his sister Barbara is being shot with an air rifle,"(an incident that is portrayed in the film).

But it wasn't just the pressures of celebrity and sectarian violence that induced Ann Best's rapid descent into alcohol dependency. There was almost certainly a genetic disposition. "The alcoholism in the family isn't restricted to George and Ann – George's sister Julie is also an alcoholic," says Barr. Indeed Julie and George's sister, Barbara Best-McNarry, has written about her "belief in this genetic link". How much input did the surviving members of the Best family have into the BBC2 drama?

"It's not an authorised Best family film," says Barr. "There was one of those in 2000 (the widely panned Best, starring John Lynch). However we've been keeping them informed every step of the way and, more recently, showing the film to them."

What Best – His Mother's Son categorically isn't, says Barr, is a football film. "Have you ever seen a good football film? The Damned United may be different – I haven't seen it yet – but you can be sure that when Peter Morgan or David Peace was writing it they weren't interested in football per se. Football is only interesting as football; it's quite difficult to get it to speak to anything else."

Tom Payne had to have a double for the shots where he's seen practising corner kicks ("I'm not left-footed like George," he explains) – although it was accent-coaching (Payne grew up in Bath) that proved more urgent than honing any soccer skills. "I made a choice at the beginning not to try and impersonate George," he says, looking for clues instead in Best's body language. "He was someone who would cross his legs and look down a lot. Watching the archive footage you tell that he was guarded and quite a quiet man really; all you read about his gregariousness was not him at all."

A football film it may not be, but the archive glimpses of Best in action here made me wish for a really good documentary about Best the player. As they still say in Belfast "Maradona good; Pelé better; George Best".

"I was surprised that Pelé always rated George as the better player," says Terry Cafolla. "There is that great clip where he takes off his boot and kicks the ball away; it's that nonchalance and creativity. I read somewhere in the research that Manchester United had to change their rules of training because when he got the ball no one could get it off him; all that great football does get lost behind the tabloid headlines."

"I would hope that the film would make you look again at Best," says Colin Barr, "to look at him differently, as the genius on the football pitch. I would like to think that would shine even more brightly once you knew all this stuff."

'Best – His Mother's Son' is showing on BBC2 on Sunday at 9pm