[1] It tells the story of Ellen, a factory worker's wife trapped in an unhappy marriage amidst the grime and industrial noise of northern England.

Working class Ellen (Barbara Marten) makes friends with her young son's middle-class schoolteacher, Kathy, also known as Miss Thompson (Andrina Carroll).

He claims not to have based the story of the two women on anything that happened to him in real life but that it came as a flash of inspiration when he woke up one morning.

[4] Despite a British setting and cast, the film was released on DVD by Image Entertainment in America before the UK, to some good reviews in Variety and the Los Angeles Times.

The second documentary on the UK DVD is about deleted scenes and in it Woodcock explains why he remastered the movie in 2005 and cut it back by about 15 minutes for the 2006 British release.