Set in the coastal town of Brighton, England, Dirty Weekend follows the story of Bella, a mild-mannered secretary who works from home in a basement flat.

Halliwell's Film Guide described Dirty Weekend as "a sleazy little tale of a female vigilante, directed and acted in a perfunctory, over-emphatic manner".

[4] Sheila Johnston's assessment of Dirty Weekend was also negative: "no window-dressing can hide the fact that an aura of indelible naffness hangs over the movie...the screenplay is hewn out from Helen Zahavi's over-written novel with no concessions to the way people actually speak".

[5] The Observer review claimed Dirty Weekend has "a certain factitious topicality", but went on to state "a work so bad in every way, and mostly risibly so, cannot be the focus of serious controversy".

[6] Brian Case, reviewing the film for Time Out, dismissed Dirty Weekend as "pretty rotten", and criticised Winner's direction, stating it resembled "out-takes from local cinema advertising, which distances the audience from the material and indeed from wakefulness itself".