It stars Timothy Spall (working with Leigh for the first time), Eric Richard, Tim Barker, Kay Stonham, Su Elliot, Frances Barber, Sheila Kelley, and Lorraine Brunning.
The story of three postmen; "Gordon Leach (Timothy Spall), a slothful couch potato who is in permanent dispute with his svelte wife Hazel (Kay Stonham), who has lost four stone," and who "is offering to entertain ... postman Stan (Eric Richard), when his shifts don't coincide with Gordon's."
The third postman Harold Fish (Tim Barker) and his wife June (Su Elliott), have a dead marriage.
[2] Clive James, then television critic of the Observer, praised Leigh's film: "The gripping story of three postmen and how practically nothing happened to them,..if you can imagine Cosi fan tutte with the music taken out, and then with the words taken out, and then with all the decor and costumes replaced by the tackiest fabrics and furniture known to mortal man, you've got a movie by Mike Leigh.
Timothy Spall, (whose father was a postman, and thought the film 'pretty accurate') has said: "If you were to tell me you think Mike's patronising, I'd accuse him of the dead opposite: of elevating, and of making amusing and tragic, what most people in life go through.