'Les Miserables' a towering achievement

Tom Hooper, Oscar-winning director of The King’s Speech, dreamed a dream of immortalising Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil’s powerhouse musical without the conventional safety net of lip-synching.

That audacious gamble – asking the actors to sing live in every take – pays off handsomely, teasing out the heartbreaking emotion in an adaptation of a stage show which has become a global phenomenon.