Madfabulous is a biopic of Henry Paget, the fifth Marquess of Anglesey, who was probably mad and definitely fabulous. His prodigalities in jewels and clothing were enormous. He perfumed his automobile so it belched violets. He was partial to wearing women’s clothing. He set up his own theatre company to showcase his ‘butterfly dance’. Needless to say, he burned through his family’s fortune in a few short years. How could all this not be wonderful on screen? Who doesn’t wish for an automobile belching violets? Alas, the film leans towards the pedestrian but, still, it will send you down a most satisfying rabbit hole. Look him up. The spit of Frank Zappa, right? And this is the late 1800s we are talking about. Respect.

The timeline is unclear but I think we begin in 1895 or thereabouts, when Henry (played by Callum Scott Howells) is 20, and here he is, sailing up the Menai Strait to the family seat, Plas Newydd, on the Isle of Anglesey. He disembarks wearing a frock and pearls, much to the disapproval of his aunt (Louise Brealey) and his cousin Neville (Louis Hynes), but his other cousin Lily (Ruby Stokes) is delighted. What fun! The family’s butler (Rupert Everett) is startled but proves kindly. Henry is vivacious, capricious, unpredictable and unwell. He is already spitting blood into a handkerchief (Chekhov’s cough, we might call it) so we can assume he’s not long for this world.

At this point, according to my own research, Henry had an income of £110,000 a year, which would be around £18 million today. And he burned through all that and more? Indeed, he did. He transforms the chapel into a 150-seat theatre based on the Dresden opera house where he performs this ‘butterfly dance’ (oh boy) and puts on plays with his troupe who all live in-house and whom he massively overpays. He fritters money away on clothes – he owned 100 dressing gowns, some lined in squirrel; he had one ensemble made entirely of diamonds – and buys the entire window display of a jewellery shop. Yet these scenes somehow lack life. I was hoping for the energy of Viv Nicholson and Spend, Spend, Spend. But maybe it’s because such outrageous spending is so normal to him that it falls rather flat. You just don’t feel the thrill of it. It’s like you are I going to Asda.

There is some attempt at psychological heft. Henry’s mother had died when he was two. His father, who lives on the family’s other estate in Staffordshire, wants nothing to do with him. There is a void he needs to fill but why non-conformity on such a scale would fill it is never explored by a script that can be perfunctory. It also sidesteps his sexuality. Every contemporaneous newspaper report I read describes him euphemistically as ‘effeminate’ yet his gayness is only tentatively addressed here. He did marry Lily but it was short-lived. (She quickly divorced him on the grounds of non-consummation.) We don’t see him getting up to much elsewhere. A hand lingering on the back of a handsome theatre producer and that’s it.

The scenery is divine, and while the unrealistic ending – which deploys the clichés of your average Sunday evening TV show – lets it down the performances are excellent. Howells ensures we feel sympathy for Henry, and Everett’s butler is touching. Henry bankrupted his family who in turn tried to eradicate him from history by burning all his papers after his death, but here we are, talking about him more than 150 years on. It’s exactly what he would have wanted, so full marks to Madfabulous for that.