Overblown vanilla awfulness: The Great Fire is more Great Farce

With its 1990s Cher wigs, glossy modern make-up and Disneyfied London, even a lustful Samuel Pepys can’t save ITV’s The Great Fire.

By Rachel Cooke

(Photo By Cher wigs: but ITV's Great Fire fails to catch fire)

The Great Fire
ITV

It’s September 1666, and in Pudding Lane in the City of London, a baker named Thomas Farriner (Andrew Buchan) is flirting mildly with his sister-in-law Sarah (Rose Leslie). A decent cockney sort of fellow, he would, if he was in EastEnders – which, frankly, he might as well be – pop in to the Queen Vic for a swift half only very occasionally. Moreover, his blue tabard is surprisingly spruce for one who makes his living slaving in such supposedly cramped, hot and insanitary conditions; ditto the billowing white shirt beneath it. And his teeth! How pearly they are, not a black stump in sight.