In my office, packed floor to ceiling with home media – digital,
analogue, paper, plastic and vinyl – it’s easy to forget the time when we assigned
value to film and television based on a single viewing and memory alone. I was
a teenager when Nuts in May was broadcast in 1976 and it not only stayed
in my mind but it became a shared memory with my partner, similarly, raised on
a diet of Play for Today although not so much of the ITV in her case.
In the 2021 BFI Q&A in the extras the cast recall the
in-joke created by Roger Sloman’s character, Keith asking “our larder isn't sticking in you is it?” when a rain-sodden Ray clambers into the back
of his Morris Minor. It’s such a daft line – for many reasons – but to this day
is repeated by cast and crew whenever they meet. In the same way, I am Keith to
my wife’s Candice-Marie, on holiday or on walks when I’m stating the obvious or
being boringly precise about unimportant subjects.
Mike Leigh’s film was made on a rain-soaked shoestring in
1975 but it has remained in our minds and collective consciousness ever since:
perhaps because of the freshness of performances and the enduring relevance of
this most “suburban” of rural dramas – one of the extras is Basil Wright’s
documentary The Country Comes to Town (1933) and Nuts is certainly the
Town come to the Country and a small camping site that represents the clash
between class and culture, freedom and licence and McCartney’s Wings versus homegrown
folk songs about going to the zoo.
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| Alison Steadman and Roger Sloman |
It’s interesting to hear Leigh talk about the characters as
being something created by the actors and not so much his scripting and it’s clear
that his actors prepared thoroughly for their roles by thinking themselves into
these characters and then reacting to the situations the loose script put them
in. Husband and wife team Sheila Kelley and Stephen Bill who played biker
couple as Honky and Finger, travelled down to the filming location in Dorset on
a motorbike completely in character although I’m not sure if she was wearing
the platform boots seen in the film.
Alison Steadman, who ties with Nigel Hawthorne on nine Plays
for Today and is still ubiquitous on our telly’s, and Roger Sloman (surprisingly
only three PfTs) create a couple of well-intentioned monsters in Candice-Marie
and Keith – both as memorable as Say Beverley in Leigh’s Annabel’s Party
(1977) in terms of their being within a gnat’s whisker of believability. The
couple are socially conscious, vegetarians and adherents to The Country Code
and yet they are not tolerant of people who either do not share their values or
are just not aware. In this space is Ray, played with diffident precision by Anthony
O'Donnell – another class act with a long career – who just wants to be left alone but who is
pulled into the disapproving gravitational whirl of the couple’s dissatisfactions
(with each other as well as everyone else).
Ray is a student PE Teacher who is also studying geology and
who likes processed milk and “Diddy” David Hamilton’s Radio One show (on which
we hear Wing’s Magneto and Titanium Man, a mid-period dip…). Spurred on
by Candice-Marie, Keith asks him to turn the transistor down only to have to
move their tent when their noisy neighbour ignores him. It’s a foretaste of
what’s to come when Honky and Finger arrive but in the meantime the couple form
an uneasy truce with Ray, Candice-Marie especially being interested in reaching
out much to Keith’s jealous disapproval.
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| Wings or The Zoo Song? Your choice... |
There’s enough between Candice-Marie and Keith to fill out a
marriage counsellor’s big notebook and they are a couple held together by the
strangest of power dynamics as well as their self-impose rules. After jealously
attempting to intimidate Ray for his choice of syllabus (I know!), Keith has to
back down after Candice-Marie says she doesn’t want to go on any further trips
with him – it’s the unsubtle blackmail of children and both are undoubtedly
immature but hey, let he who is without sin cast the first stick on the bonfire…
Keith takes his wife on a coastal walk – five miles he
estimates, before revealing it was 14 after they return. His organised in a
disorganised way wanting to take three sets of footwear for a walk involving a
clamber, seaside pebbles and Corfe Castle, C-M resists and is glad of it after
the rain soaks his plimsoles… their relationship is full of micro-aggressions
and petty sniping but they can, at least come together for the formal duties of
singing together, he on banjo, she on guitar. The songs featured were written
by the actors in character.
The delicate balance is disturbed by the arrival of the very
urban Honky and Finger on their motorbike - a couple who just don’t know the “code”
that Keith has in his head nor the rules of the campsite. They’re loud but not
unreasonable but when Finger wants to start a fire on the campsite, Keith
cracks and a confrontation is unavoidable. It is a visceral moment and
sympathies are balanced as we can recognise the pressures on both couples of an
ungoverned situation that throws them together in ways for which they are not
prepared: the reality of the class divide.
And they say culture war is new and that “Woke” – that word
really meaning to other – is a “mind virus” of modern design. Imagine Nigel and
Kemi pitching their tents next to yours in a wet and sodden west country
camping site… shudder.
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| Stephen Bill, Anothony O'Donnell and Sheila Kelly |
There’s a must-have limited edition which includes an illustrated
booklet with essays on the film by Mike Leigh, John Wyver and Dr Adam Scovell
and writing on the archive films by Ellen Cheshire and Vic Pratt. It may help
you decide on whether you’re Team Keith or Team Candice Marie but, as with all
things as magically real as Leigh’s work, these rich characters are not all bad
and they’re not all good. As he always says, there is no “they” in his work,
only us…
Special town and country features:
Newly restored by the BBC in 4K
and presented in High Definition
Archive commentary by Mike Leigh
(2009)
Mike Leigh Remembers… Nuts in
May (2026, 14 mins): the director looks back on one of his most influential
television plays
Director and Cast Q&A (2021,
audio, 43 mins): Mike Leigh, Alison Steadman, Roger Sloman, Anthony O’Donnell,
Sheila Kelley and Stephen Bill are reunited on stage at BFI Southbank
BFI London Film Festival 2024
Screen Talk: Mike Leigh (2024, 48 mins): celebrating the 2024 release of his
film Hard Truths, Leigh discusses his career with writer and journalist Amy
Raphael
The Country Comes to Town
(1933, 21 mins): a documentary made to help modernise the image of farming and
the British countryside
Spring Comes to England
(1934, 16 mins): documentary on the journey produce makes from field to market
– including Candice Marie’s favourite, mushrooms
Winter on the Farm (1941,
15 mins): a public information film on Upton Manor Farm in Dorset
The Chiffy Kids: Pot Luck
(1976, 19 mins): the Children’s Film Foundation favourites take a holiday under
canvas
Play Safe: Camping and Fishing
(1978, 2 mins): a safety awareness film showing the dangers lurking in the
countryside
You can/must order Nuts in May direct from
the BFI from 17th August and come rain or shine it’s perfect viewing
for all of us who wonder why the neighbours are so noisy and the World doesn’t do
as it’s told.
There’s a fabulous moment in the BFI Q&A when Alison and
Roger click right back into character as if the half-century between had been a
lunchbreak, and then lead the audience in a sing-along of the Zoo song.
Ultimately this work binds us together with its vitality and memory of a shared
entertainment. That’s priceless.
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