Victoria Wood plays a straight role as a downtrodden middle aged mother and housewife.
In the bittersweet Housewife, 49. Nella Last has recovered from one breakdown and seems to be heading for another one. She is alone, her husband and his sister are not sympathetic to her plight. Her husband is domineering and rather introverted himself.
Nella feels stigmatised by her social superiors in Barrow in Furness.
When the war starts Nella is nervous and uncertain. Afraid to go out in the dark alone. She reluctantly takes part in the woman's voluntary service, by the end of the war Nella is the backbone of her community. Someone people could rely on.
The drama is based on Nella's wartime diaries written for the Mass-Observation project set up in 1937 to record the lives of ordinary people.
It is wonderfully made but it also wants to feel too much like a Victoria Wood drama and too many characters are one dimensional. No one else seems to develop much.
It needed to be spiky for dramatic impact. Nella at last confronts her husband for his behaviour but we are only see Nella toying with the idea whether she should leave her husband. Her husband's sister is let off scot free for her rude behaviour.
Even the scenes with her older son Arthur. I am not sure how much more he could had telegraphed he was gay but it seems to have gone over his parent's head.
Housewife, 49 tries too hard to be a pleasant drama when it could had been more with the actors in it.
In the bittersweet Housewife, 49. Nella Last has recovered from one breakdown and seems to be heading for another one. She is alone, her husband and his sister are not sympathetic to her plight. Her husband is domineering and rather introverted himself.
Nella feels stigmatised by her social superiors in Barrow in Furness.
When the war starts Nella is nervous and uncertain. Afraid to go out in the dark alone. She reluctantly takes part in the woman's voluntary service, by the end of the war Nella is the backbone of her community. Someone people could rely on.
The drama is based on Nella's wartime diaries written for the Mass-Observation project set up in 1937 to record the lives of ordinary people.
It is wonderfully made but it also wants to feel too much like a Victoria Wood drama and too many characters are one dimensional. No one else seems to develop much.
It needed to be spiky for dramatic impact. Nella at last confronts her husband for his behaviour but we are only see Nella toying with the idea whether she should leave her husband. Her husband's sister is let off scot free for her rude behaviour.
Even the scenes with her older son Arthur. I am not sure how much more he could had telegraphed he was gay but it seems to have gone over his parent's head.
Housewife, 49 tries too hard to be a pleasant drama when it could had been more with the actors in it.