Here we gather... Nuts in May (1976), BFI Blu-ray Out Now

 

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.

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.

Wings' Titanium Man 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.

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 17^th 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.

Alison Steadman and Anthony O'Donnel say "Big cheese!"

Plays from yesterday... Play for Today, BFI Blu-ray box set

“…why resurrect Play for Today? What could today’s television industry learn from it? Looking at the seven plays in this Volume One BFI set alone, what stands out is the natural diversity of their subject matter and their brave search for originality.” Marcus Prince, TV programmer for BFI Southbank

After watching through this new set I can confirm wholeheartedly that Mr Prince is not just whistling Dixie; these plays are strikingly vibrant even after all of these years and the quality of performance and writing stands the test of time both in terms of emotional and historical resonance. For some, like myself, these plays were watched and understood as a pre-teen but they were a shared family experience and hearing my parents discussing them is one of my earliest memories of critical appreciation.

I only directly remember one of the plays, Shakespeare or Bust (1973), probably because it was one of three featuring Brian Glover, Ray Mort and Douglas Livingstone as Art, Ern and Abe, three Leeds miners in search of cultural and other adventure. But I recognise the style of the plays as well as the performers especially Alison Steadman who is joint record holder for most PFT appearances on nine, most memorably as Abigail and Candice Marie, along with Nigel Hawthorne. Here she’s an expectant mother alongside Bernard Hill (just the seven appearances) and they show exactly why they have enjoyed such long careers on their way from Rochdale here to Essex and Port Talbot as well as Arundel's Isle.

Gemma Jones in The Lie

Perhaps the most a-typical is the first play, The Lie (1970) written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Alan Bridges as part of an international co-production entitled The Largest Theatre in the World. It is more cinematic than the others as you might expect given the writer’s day job and typical of his concerns about relationships. This was the third play in season one and features Frank Finlay and Gemma Jones as Andrew and Anna Firth a professional couple in a sterile marriage, stifled by their careers and living all too comfortably in the fug of material wellbeing. After ten years of marriage they have two children, a nanny and sleep in separate bedrooms, but their balance is about to be upset as Andrew suffers at set back in his working life and turning back to fall on home comforts, discovers there’s far less warmth there than he thought.

Anna’s career is still on track and she has a long-standing secret lover, Ellis (John Carson) who himself is married. There’s an excruciating dinner party – avocado prawn starters all round – with Anna sat next to Ellis and Andrew with Ellis’ wife. The story is full of betrayals as you might expect from the four times married Bergman, but are lies better than revelations?

Frank Findlay, a lost soul swimming in a fish bowl?

There’s a striking cameo from Joss Ackland as Anna’s brother, a writer having a nervous breakdown and wearing make-up and nail varnish as he simmers away in hospital. Is he the author’s voice; driven to nervous exhaustion by being too honest to make the compromises that enable the others’ unhappiness? I wonder what becomes of him?

In Passage to England (1975) there are more deceptions and also the first sighting of the wonderful Colin Welland, writer and actor who in ten years would hoist his Oscar a lot and declare that the British were coming. Back in the seventies the adage was that British cinema was alive and well and on television and Play for Today surely played a major part in keeping things afloat prior to the cinematic revival heralded by Chariots of Fire.

Here Welland plays Onslow, captain of a small cargo boat, the very English Morris Dancer who, along with his partner Graham (Niall Padden) get an offer they could and should refuse from a young Ugandan Asian called Anand (Tariq Yunus); a bar of gold at bargain price if they smuggle him, his cousin Pramila (June Bolton) and sick uncle Dharam (Renu Setna) to England. The play balances a serious subject with a light-heartedness that serves to wrong foot the viewer even now with a nuanced discussion of the British and their empire.

Colin Welland was born in Liverpool

Written by Leon Griffiths the story is mostly set in the Amsterdam docks which director John Mackenzie uses to atmospheric effect much as he would do in The Long Good Friday; who doesn’t love a dock-side drama?

There’s more Welland, this time as writer of altogether more earnest and needfully complex tale of post-imperial national identity with Your Man from Six Counties (1976) in which a young Catholic boy Jimmy (Joseph Reynolds) goes to stay with his Uncle in the west of Ireland after his father is killed by a loyalist bomb in Northern Ireland.

Location is again an important part of the context and it looks very much as if all the shooting was done in situ from the hills and fields to cottages and pubs of County Sligo, you can even see flat-topped Benbulbin Mountain near Drumcliff, where W.B. Yeats is buried. There’s a very fine cast backgrounded with local faces that could only ever be Irish, with Donal McCann as Uncle Danny and a young Brenda Fricker (first Irish woman to win an Oscar for My Left Foot in 1989) as his wife Mollie. Young Jimmy is like a fish out of water, a city boy in the country, carrying a pet rook once rescued by his Dad, in a cage. Irish mythology may have it that these birds symbolise the souls of the dead yet, to local farmers, they’re a menace to be shot and hung out to dry.

Donal McCann and Brenda Fricker

Danny tries his best to bring Jimmy back to life and to put his father’s violent death behind him and yet the latter’s best friend Pat (Paul Antrim), a rebel in thought if not deed, wants to encourage the boy to hero worship his “martyred” father and to follow in his footsteps more forcefully than he has ever managed. Both Danny and Pat have something to learn about the boy and Mollie acts as the play’s moral heart trying to pull them together for the lad’s sake. Welland’s script allows so much room for interpretation especially as Katie Crosson observes in her booklet essay, “No two viewpoints are identical… “ meaning that there is no single straightforward narrative: you have to make your own mind up.

‘I want to have this baby and I want to see it being born and I want to feel it being born… and if you’re not interested in helping me why don’t you just sod off.’

Mike Stott’s Our Flesh and Blood (1977) is ostensibly more straightforward but is no less a deft thought-piece on contemporary masculinity as Bernard Blincoe (Bernard Hill) has to come to terms with his wife Jan (Dame Alison Steadman – if not yet, then soon…) and her desire for a baby on her terms. Bernard views this development with trepidation and his anxiety dreams turn into reality as Jan aims for a natural birth. At the hospital he gets a nervous young doctor, a reassuringly sassy sister (Diana Davies) and an old school consultant, Richard Briers on fine form and, amidst the comedic chaos finally catches up with Jan…  

Bernard Hill and Alison Steadman (who was also born in Liverpool)

The play has a lot to say about the role of the sexes at the time, men either pompously insistent or next to useless when the waters break, but this was not yet a country in which men routinely attended childbirth or in which couples were allowed too much of an opinion about how they were to have their baby. It’s a heart-warming glimpse of the future.

Back to Brian Glover on a barge to Stratford in Shakespeare or Bust (1973) for a mix of past and future as his earnest Art looks not just for the nation’s poetic truths but also comradeship and fairness. Peter Terson’s three heroes have working class pride and sense of self but also innocence as they happily punch above their weight on this aquatic road trip. They meet dropout boat dwellers who don’t share solidarity even as they’re happy to take Art’s coin, lock-keeper’s happy to mix with the man who turned their pub into a wine bar and follow an odd couple in a very posh boat; an older man with a yachting cap (Peter Honri) and his much younger boat dressing Hélène (Katya Wyeth). Abe reckons he stands a chance and the three sup their pints barely blinking in their awe-struck appreciation of this alien glamour.

Almost nothing knocks these lads back though and Art’s enthusiasm is infectious even if Ern can’t stop missing his wife and Abe just wants the one he can’t have. They relish every new turn as passionately as their drink and in the end are rewarded with surprises against the longest odds.

Ray Mort, Brian Glover and Douglas Livingstone

Back of Beyond (1974) is an altogether more mysterious affair with Rachel Roberts absolutely superb as the sad and mysterious Olwen; a woman hiding in solitude. Desmond Davis’s play is another to use locations to good effect, this time the Brecon Beacons and Llanelli-born Roberts looks like she grew up along with these hills.

There’s more mystery with John Bowen’s A Photograph (1977) featuring the great John Stride as pompous intellectual Michael Otway and Stephanie Turner as his long-suffering schoolteacher of a wife. There’s a great essay in the booklet from series producer/booklet commissioning editor Vic Pratt and this is further proof, if any were needed of Play for Today’s insistence on making its audience think.

Rachel Roberts yn ysmygu sigarét

Most of these plays have hardly been seen since first airing and the odd repeat. There were over 200 plays in the series and whilst some were wiped by a cost-conscious BBC, most survive and these seven provide not only proof of the quality and diversity but also a mouth-watering entrée to what we can only hope will be the start of more releases and screenings.

Play for Today: Volume 1 is released on 19^th November and can be ordered direct from the BFI website now! 

There’s a trailer available here but for many this is Christmas come early.