Grown-Ups

It stars Lesley Manville, Philip Davis, Brenda Blethyn, Janine Duvitski, Lindsay Duncan and Sam Kelly.

[1] Dick and Mandy (Philip Davis and Lesley Manville), friends at school, sweethearts, and now newlyweds, are moving into their first home.

Their new council-owned house turns out to be next door to their Religious Knowledge teacher at school, Ralph Butcher (Sam Kelly).

They are visited by another friend from school, Sharon (Janine Duvitski), and also, consistently throughout their settling-in period, by Mandy's older sister, the fussing Gloria (Brenda Blethyn), who seeks escape from being stuck at home with her tyrannical mother.

Christine goes next door to speak to Mandy and Dick to calm things down and arrange for them to take Gloria back to her Mum's.

That evening, Dick and Mandy decide to try for a baby after all, whilst at the Butchers' house, Christine angrily tells Ralph she also wants to have a sex life and a family.

Having considered Harlow for the film's location, he decided finally to shoot in Canterbury, a choice strengthened when he discovered that Brenda Blethyn, whom he had cast in a role 'that was to be one of his most inspired creations',[2] came from nearby Ramsgate.

After the screening, Maurice Hatton, a fellow film-maker, and one with a lower-middle-class Jewish background in Manchester, asked Leigh if the film was autobiographical.

I now see that, after the RSC abortion, [Leigh had cancelled his 1978 piece for the company after ten weeks of rehearsal], I was plugging back into a world I knew about, things that directly concerned me: hell in the suburbs.