Drama Smörgåsbord - Disc 16

Drama Smörgåsbord - Disc 16

Bella And The Boys

"13 years after Bella, Martin and Lee were there, the manager of their children's home is retiring and the home being shutdown. As they meet up together at a reunion/retirement celebration it sparks old memories of their time together at the home. Both Martin and Lee fancy Bella and their relationship are very involved. The reunion brings back memories of their youth as well as truths about what has happened since. Bella and the Boys is a one-off British television drama, produced by the independent production company Century Films for the BBC and originally screened on the BBC Two network on 15 February 2004. Eighty minutes in length, the drama was written and directed by Brian Hill, and starred Billie Piper, Tom Burke and Freddie Cunliffe. The story surrounds the lives of three residents of a children's care home, Bella (Piper), Lee (Burke) and Martin (Cunliffe). They meet up thirteen years after having left the home for the manager's retirement celebration, and the meeting sparks off various reminiscences about their time together, both good and bad, and what has happened to them in the intervening years."

Belonging

Middle-aged Jess Copplestone is left to look after the elderly relatives of her husband Jacob and to make a new life for herself, after he leaves her for a younger woman. An all-star cast of Brenda Blethyn, Kevin Whately, Rosemary Harris, Anna Massey and Peter Sallis.

The Bad Mother's Handbook

Great cast in this one. Also found in the Catherine Tate set, but since she is mainly identified with comedy I'm making it available here as well.

"The Bad Mother's Handbook tells the story of one year in the lives of three unforgettable women... Karen (Catherine Tate), her teenage daughter Charlie (Holly Grainger) and Karen's mother, Nan (Anne Reid).

Both hilarious and wise, it is a clear-eyed look at motherhood and childhood, from the moment the condom breaks, to the moment you hear your baby's first cry. The realisation that no two mothers are alike, and that ultimately love is the most important thing of all.
Karen gave birth to Charlie when she was a teenager and can't help feeling that accidental motherhood has meant she's missed out on life. What with looking after her increasingly dotty mother and keeping an eagle eye on her daughter to ensure she doesn't do anything to jeopardise her chances of going to University, she's got her work cut out for her.
But there's something else. She can't put her finger on it, but something's niggling away at her.
Somewhere along the line something's gone wrong. And she's right.
Because when Charlie and Nan both accidentally turn Karen's world upside down, she's going to discover things that will change her life for ever."

Take A Girl Like You
BBC 3-parter from 2000 with a solid cast (Rupert Graves, Hugh Bonneville, Emma Chambers, Robert Daws.) Found this review online:
"Actually the novel by Kingsley Amis was filmed in 1970 with Haley Mills as the delectable Jenny Bunn, but this is a more satisfactory 150 minute mini –series retelling of the story of how sweet schoolteacher Ms Bunn comes to middle England from the North, armed with nothing but her principles, including no sex before marriage, and handicapped by her extreme good looks. She is instantly targeted by the good-looking all round roue Patrick, a teacher in a public (ie exclusive private) school. She also has to fend off her landlord, a fellow boarder of lesbian leanings and sundry members of the country gentry.

Jenny, of course is not against sex, she just wants to wait for Mr Right. Patrick on the other hand is so used to mere lust that he doesn't recognise love when it comes along, especially in such a divine package as Miss Jenny. The story is played out at a leisurely pace against a background of green countryside, drives in open sports cars, country houses, cricket, incredibly smoky pubs and lots of grog, all permeated with the cool sound of jazz (not a rocker in sight). As Jenny, Sienna Guillory is beautifully virginal and Rupert Greaves is charming (and very well preserved) as the dissolute Patrick. A host of minor characters make what would otherwise be a thin story into something more interesting. There's Julian (Hugh Bonneville), Patrick's landed gentry chum, with the jazz parties and the mistress in town, the awful Dick the landlord (Robert Daws) and his sneering wife (Emma Chambers), Patrick's high minded Scottish flatmate Graham (Ian Driver), whose efforts at seduction inevitably end in failure, Jenny's lesbian French room mate Anna who turns out not what she seems, the headmaster's daughter who at 18 is several laps ahead of Jenny in the sexual experiences stakes, a blackmailing parent (Jeff Rawle – the wonderful George in `Drop the Dead Donkey') desperate to get his dumb son a scholarship to Oxford, and an old Lord (Leslie Phillips) who insists on telling Patrick about his groping problem.
Anyway, it's a handsomely done production with everybody looking and sounding right. Once again we recommend you read the book. Amis was a fine writer with an flair for comedy and an eye for telling detail. The story is a slight one but the ambience very authentic – as Amis demonstrates the sexual mores of the swinging sixties were well on their way by 1959. Seeing it all up on screen I was struck by how far away it all seemed – I might as well have been watching `Pride and Prejudice' but then the scriptwriter Andrew Davies has done lots of Jane Austen. Ah, tempis fugit, as Patrick the classics master would have said. The end of the story, told by Patrick in a brief voice-over, is a sadly familiar tale. "