[4] It was produced by Sidney Cole for Act Films Ltd.[5] It features a musical interlude when all the staff dance to a song: "What's Cookin'" by Adam Faith.

This nervous over-emphasis becomes the film's main characteristic, partly because James Hill, directing his first feature, underlines every point already made verbally.

But the more obvious realism of the screen splits up these two elements in the play; the dialogue is switched off, as it were, for the lunch-time rush sequence, all close-ups, nervous cutting, and images of hissing, bubbling, unappetising food.

The sequence in which the cooks are persuaded to dream, to step outside their world, becomes not poetic but naive – again, we are brought too close to it but not taken into it.

Some of the performances (Tom Bell, Brian Phelan, Sean Lynch, Frank Atkinson) have the right authenticity; some, such as Mary Yeomans', are badly under-directed.