The television personality who so famously “rose without trace” has died at the age of 74. The BBC’s potted biography gets the basic facts across without much commentary about whether there was ever really much more to Frost than some cleverness and the remarkable luck of coming of age alongside television.
Two opinions on that question come from creative artists. Ron Howard made a tremendous film about Frost’s interviews of Nixon that portrayed Frost with complexity and some sympathy. Very much worth your time, not least for the fine performances of the two leads.
A more hostile take comes from the Pythons, who worked for Frost early in their career and came away highly unimpressed. They got their vengeance in several ways, including listing his home phone number on their Mouse Problem sketch and then skewering him as “Timmy Williams”