Robin Williams A Life In Ten Pictures review: Comic genius who spread so much happiness but never found it himself, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Hard to believe now, but Robin Williams could so easily have been forgotten — a briefly popular comic actor who burned up in a blaze of drugs, booze and fame.

Pam Dawber, his co-star in the zany sitcom Mork & Mindy, recalled rehearsals with him ashen and hungover from a wild night on the tiles in Los Angeles, in March 1982.

He told her how he'd planned to hang out with Robert de Niro at a hotel — but the actor 'had a couple of girls in the room, so I couldn't get in'. 

Instead, he stopped at the Chateau Marmont hotel to do drugs with Blues Brother John Belushi, who was 'so loaded he could hardly stand up'.

Studying a publicity picture of herself with Williams, on A Life In Ten Pictures (BBC2), Pam began to cry. 

Robin Williams a popular comic actor who burned up in a blaze of drugs, booze and fame

Pam Dawber, his co-star in the zany sitcom Mork & Mindy, recalled rehearsals with him ashen and hungover from a wild night on the tiles in Los Angeles, in March 1982

Pam (right) had been delegated by the producers of Mork & Mindy to break the news to Robin that Belushi, one of the Blues Brothers he had been partying with the night before, was dead

She had been delegated by the producers of Mork & Mindy to break the news to her co-star that Belushi was dead. After Williams left him that night, he collapsed from an overdose.

Pam smiled through her tears. 'I said to Robin, 'If that ever happens to you, I will find you and kill you first.'

This affectionate and sometimes sentimental biography showed us Williams in all his glorious nascent talent. 

One friend remembered his 'limitless creativity,' another described doing madcap mime shows with him in Central Park and how Robin — then a drama student — once leapt into a stranger's open-top sports car and began canoodling with his girlfriend.

His first wife, Valerie, melted over a photo of him in his early stand-up days: 'Before he was famous, before he was rich, when he was just fabulous.'

But if he'd died with Belushi that night in a puddle of booze and cocaine, all his brilliance would be a faded memory. 'On what slender threads do life and fortune hang,' as the writer Alexandre Dumas remarked.

After one stand-up show, Robin came off stage and lamented, 'Isn't it funny how I can bring great happiness to all these people? But not to myself'

His first wife, Valerie, melted over a photo of him in his early stand-up days: 'Before he was famous, before he was rich, when he was just fabulous'

One friend remembered his 'limitless creativity,' another described doing madcap mime shows with him in Central Park and how Robin — then a drama student — once leapt into a stranger's open-top sports car and began canoodling with his girlfriend

It took his later work, the deliriously funny and heartbreaking films such as Good Morning Vietnam, Awakenings and Good Will Hunting, to fix his flame in our minds for ever.

This retrospective galloped through those peak years. It could have shown us more of Williams at his confident best, perhaps in conversation with Dick Cavett, America's most intelligent and insightful talk show host, who didn't appear here.

Williams was such an inexhaustible improviser that he once recorded a two-day interview with Cavett, barely pausing to draw breath. 

But years later, after a stand-up show where Cavett was his guest in the wings, he came off stage and lamented, 'Isn't it funny how I can bring great happiness to all these people? But not to myself.'

The final 15 minutes of this documentary focused on his decline — slipping back into alcohol abuse, tormented by Parkinson's disease and undiagnosed dementia. 

We saw him in his element, entertaining troops in Afghanistan, but also in the depths of despair.

'Life,' he once shrugged. 'It's not for everyone.' It's a mercy he hung on to his as long as he did.