Sian Barber cites other examples of this trend: Jane Eyre (1970), Wuthering Heights, Black Beauty (1971), The Go-Between (1971), Kidnapped (1972), Treasure Island (1973), Gulliver's Travels (1977), The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), and The Riddle of the Sands (1979).

When novice film producer Greg Smith became interested in adapting the novels to screen, the hoax was maintained and Timmy Lea received credits as the author of the source material.

[6] Guest says he was approached by Greg Smith and Michael Klinger to make the film as he had directed Au Pair Girls in 1972.

The condition of the economy of the United Kingdom in the early 1970s had left part of the British film industry dependent on American funds.

[8] The film benefited from changes in the culture of the United Kingdom, with an increasingly permissive society and changes in aspects of the censorship standards.

[6] Guest says "we saw an awful lot of people for" the lead including Dennis Waterman before casting Robin Askwith.

There was a trend at the time for successful sitcoms to be adapted in film, which produced hits such as Dad's Army (1971), On the Buses (1971), Up Pompeii (1971), and Steptoe and Son (1972).

[6] Leon Hunt, when examining the success of these films, notes their positions in the Top Twenty of the British box office.

[8] The interior of the Lea house was depicted as brightly lit and filled with eccentric items of doubtful use, such as a moose head and a gorilla suit.

[6] In criticising the original novels, sociologist Simon Frith had argued that the books derived their unflattering depiction of the British working class from stereotypes.

[6] Sian Barber argues that the films inherited the same attitude towards the working class by embracing negative stereotypes of it.

For similar reasons, other genres had started depicting people whose work required them to constantly travel, such as a salesman in O Lucky Man!

Confessions manages this by placing Timmy in the fringes of the working world, and interacting with clients of varying backgrounds and eccentricities.

[6] Sue Harper and Justin Smith argue that the film can be seen as the initiation of a young man into a world of lustful women and adult sexual pleasure.

[10] When the films were originally released they were regarded as very risqué and essentially soft core pornography, owing to the amount of nudity involved – generally female, with Robin Askwith being the only male shown naked.

Sian Barber points at this contradiction between the popular taste and the critics' notions of quality, and concludes that it offers significant insights on actual "audience preferences".

[6] In retrospect, Leon Hunt concluded that the film benefited from a combination of adult entertainment with "good clean fun", an appealing cast, and the popularity of the source novels.

[6] Guest later reflected, "I think what made Au Pair and Confessions was that I tried to walk a tightrope of skin flick and comedy, we kept it bubbling, we never took anything seriously, it was always sent up, … none of the affairs, the lovemaking or whatever came out that was the only way I'd do those.

The humour is of the sniggering, innuendo-squeezing variety and is aimed with unnerving mediocrity at a particular kind Be distinctly British – audience reaction.

Like Donner's film, Window Cleaner is angled for a teenage market, presenting a gauche and ineffectual young hero whose lack of success is much emphasised, especially with the almost-untouchable 'girl he loves', and whose eventual successes are elided into farce or fantasy (one smart suburban lady takes him on the kitchen floor, which is knee-deep in foam: sexual contact is only shown in vague long-shot, though we do get a lot of expressive shots of foam.

There is a certain energy in the presentaon of the Noggett household, a working class family on traditional Fifties' comedy lines, and here director Val Guest has one or two stabs at a more solid, observational humour.

[citation needed] Margaret Hinxman, film critic of the Daily Mail, wrote negative and increasingly exasperated reviews for every installment of the Confessions series.

[citation needed] David Robinson, writing for The Times, claimed that the commercial success of the films was based on the sexual infantilism of the viewers.