Walter is a British television drama directed by Stephen Frears and starring Ian McKellen, Barbara Jefford, Tony Melody, David Ryall, Keith Allen, Paula Tilbrook, and Jim Broadbent.

The Evening Standard reported at the time:Channel 4 is taking the extraordinary step of launching itself with one of the most shocking films about mental illness ever shown on British TV.

Walter, which occupies the key slot in next Tuesday's opening night schedule, features scenes of homosexual molestation in a mental hospital, patients covered in excrement, and a suicide in a barber's shop.

Walter falls in love with an attractive fellow-patient (played by Sarah Miles) and at her urging the two escape and attempt a life together in the outside world.

McKellen reprised the role in BBC Radio 4's Saturday Play Walter Now, broadcast on 12 January 2009, in which his character is revisited 26 years later as an old man, when the institution in which he used to live is closed and he is moved into a smaller, group home.