'Bleak Moments', 'Hard Labour': the titles of Mike Leigh's early works certainly pull no punches; and at times, when watching the latter, one yearns for the hilarious ambiguity of the later works like 'Life is Sweet', for it's uncomfortable viewing. A portrait of life in a decidedly unfashionable northern town circa 1973, you could be forgiven for thinking that the sixties had never swung; life here is ugly, and riven by divisions defined by class and sex. As always with Leigh, there are some acute observations, and the central character's upwardly mobile daughter-in-law, played by Alison Steadman, provides a hint of a world I recognise (and also a hint of Steadman's later turn in 'Abigail's party'). But there's not many laughs, just unrelenting awfulness. Life is still hard for many, but it's hard to feel nostalgic for this lost world. What should be regretted, however, is the loss of 'Play for Today', and the immense amount of talent that used to go into making dramas like this (to be broadcast to huge audiences by modern standards); in the world of multi-channels and celebrities, something, at least, has been lost.
9 Reviews
an almost too vivid slice of life
mjneu5925 November 2010
Not all of Mike Leigh's social satires are meant to be funny, and here's a case in point. This introspective portrait of a common lower middle class English household is even more bleak than usual, filled with an almost overwhelming air of inarticulate despair. These are gray, empty people trapped in gray, empty lives: Mr. Thornley is a night watchman in a desolate warehouse, Mrs. Thornley is a servant in her own home (as well as in the house of a cold, upper class matron, for whom she spends her working days dusting already spotless mantel ornaments), and Leigh's all too honest approach to the mundane agony of their daily existence leaves the viewer with an uncomfortable sense of having eavesdropped. Look quick for Ben Kingsley, playing a local abortionist; like every actor in a Mike Leigh film he all but disappears in the self-made role.
Excitement all the way !
leavymusic-25 May 2019
If you're feeling low in life catch this, it's certain to cheer you up.
On a serious note, Mike Leigh is a great, shame the BBC don't employ directors and writers to write kitchen sink dramas anymore, I suppose it would be people sitting around on phones with little or no dialogue, perhaps that's why they don't.
Shockingly bleak brilliance from Mike Leigh
simon-11831 August 1999
A classic BBC Play For Today from the days when televsion still provided a forum for this sort of comment, one that directly screamed at its audience in defiance. Hard Labour is chiefly noticeable for an excellent cast and several superbly staged scenes. Clifford Kershaw turns in a very different performance to his usual lonely old man role. Two of the finest scenes are the love scene and the clocking on at work. The "Love scene" is really anything but, as Jim returns drunk and unbearably loudly undresses while his wife sleeps. Then he forcefully has sex with her. Leigh's brilliance comes in keeping the camera away from the events, lingering almost asleep on the pillow so we feel powerless to stop the horrible events. Another fine scene is where Jim arrives to his nightshift and talks to his supervisor, a scene that goes through numerous subtle psychological changes. Also of note is Louis Raynes fine turn as the tallyman and one of the plays more klikeable characters in the form of Ben Kingsley. One excellent feature of this play is that it could be set anytime in the last 100 years. It is 1973 but for a long time early on could be almost Victorian so horrendous are the lifestyles. Producer Tony Garnett commented in the Radio Times before broadcast "If you are not shocked by this play, you have already been brainwashed." Bring back Play For Today!!
Another masterful study of the small moments in life.
freakus9 March 1999
Like most of Leigh's early works this is all about watching the details of ordinary life. The "plot" as such revolves around a woman (Smith) and the suffering she goes through every day without taking any notice. She bears her hard life impassively and has most likely known nothing else. She is treated miserably by her family and her employer and accepts it as her lot in life as millions of working class women have before her. The ensemble cast is brilliant (watch for a very young Ben Kingsley in a sweet role as a cab driver) and I was particularly impressed with Kershaw's role as the hopeless wreck of a husband.
Slice of life example of kitchen sink (terrific)
frank-gibbard14 July 2008
Of course this is excellent professional stuff, shown tonight on BBC 4 to showcase Liz Smith. What was said before here I can only endorse fully and what a surprise to find Ben Kingsley appear quite unexpectedly, as a mini-cab controller, showing early flashes of brilliance. Great BBC Play For Today almost polemic in depth of social anthropology conveyed in simple scenes with sparse but exceptionally naturalistic and believable dialogue.
Scare alert - there is a real yuck moment where Liz Smith is required to massage her old husband's extremely hairy back that must have been revolting for her, the unexpected sacrifice of acting. Bernard Hill turns in as usual a convincing performance as an under the thumb husband to Alison Steadman's control freak.
Old style pubs and seedy streets add to the time capsule value of this production which I thoroughly enjoyed, an unexpected treat as I had never heard of this at all before.
Scare alert - there is a real yuck moment where Liz Smith is required to massage her old husband's extremely hairy back that must have been revolting for her, the unexpected sacrifice of acting. Bernard Hill turns in as usual a convincing performance as an under the thumb husband to Alison Steadman's control freak.
Old style pubs and seedy streets add to the time capsule value of this production which I thoroughly enjoyed, an unexpected treat as I had never heard of this at all before.
Mike Leigh's first television film deserves greater recognition
dr_clarke_29 May 2021
Warning: Spoilers
'Hard Labour' is the first of several television films made for the BBC's Play for Today by Mike Leigh, who had previously made Bleak Moments for BBC Films. Leigh would make a total of ten television plays for the BBC (including two half-hour episodes of Second City Firsts, one now lost) before returning permanently to the cinema with 1988's High Hopes, and 'Hard Labour' thus marked the arrival of a major talent to the small screen.
'Hard Labour' is set and filmed in Salford (where Leigh grew up) and focuses on Liz Smith's Catholic house-keeper Mrs Thornley and the Stone family for whom she works. Mrs Stone reportedly was inspired by Leigh's mum, and Mrs Thornley by her cleaner, thus bringing and autobiographical element to the story that is a feature of Leigh's work. Equally typical is the fact that it is slice-of-life drama in which little actually happens, Leigh instead concentrating on the characters and the details of lives, mixing sadness, poignancy and deadpan humour to powerful effect.
'Hard Labour' marks the first major role for Liz Smith as Mrs Thornley, and she gives an impressive performance. Mrs Thornley is an almost silent presence in the Stone household, observing but rarely passing comment or judgement. She's an equally silent presence in her own home, remaining quiet and calm in a house dominated by her opinionated husband. As a result, she actually gets relatively few lines (although in a notable exception Mrs Thornley's matter-of-fact discussion with Ann about the realities of pregnancy and childbirth is priceless), but Smith's facial expressions speak volumes, especially when - paradoxically - the character is at her most carefully expressionless. The film's climax is a confession scene in which Mrs Thornley tells a priest that she doesn't love her husband, a revelation to her but not for the viewer. The priest is spectacularly unhelpful and largely just seems uncomfortable, repeatedly asking her if she has discussed her marital issues with her husband. Having fobbed her off with "Hail Marys", he returns to reading his newspaper.
This neatly shows off Leigh's sense of humour, always understated and often deadpan, for example when Mr Thornley has a prolonged conversation about the faults of his new boots with a shoe salesmen only to belated insist that "I like the boot", or when a short-tempered and highly critical nun is collecting for charity. Most of all though, 'Hard Labour' provides an early example of Leigh's preference for directing realistic stories with believable characters brought to life by a cast capable of entirely naturalistic performances through improvisation and without a script. This technique tends to distract reviewers from Leigh's technical skill, but he's also a director with a distinct and powerful visual style that usually involves shooting entirely on location and makes extensive use of close-ups for emphasis. Here for example, there is a scene in which Mrs Thornley kneads her husband's hairy back to relieve the pain in his shoulder, in which Leigh keeps the camera in close-up on her kneading fingers, making it look like a disgusting and thankless task.
Whilst the focus is on Liz Smith, the rest of the cast is also excellent, with a very young Ben Kingsley appearing as taxi driver turned cab controller Naseem, Leigh's then-wife and frequent collaborator Alison Steadman playing the Thornleys daughter-on-law Veronica, and a young Bernard Hill taking the role of her very hen-pecked husband Edward. Amongst the more famous cast members, Clifford Kershaw gives an exceptionally convincing performance as the unlikeable but believable Jim Thornley. Tellingly, there's a scene in which he gets drunk and returns home, expecting sex; Mrs Thornley looks bored and pretends to be asleep, whilst he goes ahead anyway.
'Hard Labour' has aged well, a fact demonstrated to a new audience when it received a rare television repeat following Liz Smith's death. Mike Leigh has become one of Britain's most prolific and much-loved film directors, and this serves as a reminder that as impressive as his cinematic output has been, his respectable body of television work is also important.
'Hard Labour' is set and filmed in Salford (where Leigh grew up) and focuses on Liz Smith's Catholic house-keeper Mrs Thornley and the Stone family for whom she works. Mrs Stone reportedly was inspired by Leigh's mum, and Mrs Thornley by her cleaner, thus bringing and autobiographical element to the story that is a feature of Leigh's work. Equally typical is the fact that it is slice-of-life drama in which little actually happens, Leigh instead concentrating on the characters and the details of lives, mixing sadness, poignancy and deadpan humour to powerful effect.
'Hard Labour' marks the first major role for Liz Smith as Mrs Thornley, and she gives an impressive performance. Mrs Thornley is an almost silent presence in the Stone household, observing but rarely passing comment or judgement. She's an equally silent presence in her own home, remaining quiet and calm in a house dominated by her opinionated husband. As a result, she actually gets relatively few lines (although in a notable exception Mrs Thornley's matter-of-fact discussion with Ann about the realities of pregnancy and childbirth is priceless), but Smith's facial expressions speak volumes, especially when - paradoxically - the character is at her most carefully expressionless. The film's climax is a confession scene in which Mrs Thornley tells a priest that she doesn't love her husband, a revelation to her but not for the viewer. The priest is spectacularly unhelpful and largely just seems uncomfortable, repeatedly asking her if she has discussed her marital issues with her husband. Having fobbed her off with "Hail Marys", he returns to reading his newspaper.
This neatly shows off Leigh's sense of humour, always understated and often deadpan, for example when Mr Thornley has a prolonged conversation about the faults of his new boots with a shoe salesmen only to belated insist that "I like the boot", or when a short-tempered and highly critical nun is collecting for charity. Most of all though, 'Hard Labour' provides an early example of Leigh's preference for directing realistic stories with believable characters brought to life by a cast capable of entirely naturalistic performances through improvisation and without a script. This technique tends to distract reviewers from Leigh's technical skill, but he's also a director with a distinct and powerful visual style that usually involves shooting entirely on location and makes extensive use of close-ups for emphasis. Here for example, there is a scene in which Mrs Thornley kneads her husband's hairy back to relieve the pain in his shoulder, in which Leigh keeps the camera in close-up on her kneading fingers, making it look like a disgusting and thankless task.
Whilst the focus is on Liz Smith, the rest of the cast is also excellent, with a very young Ben Kingsley appearing as taxi driver turned cab controller Naseem, Leigh's then-wife and frequent collaborator Alison Steadman playing the Thornleys daughter-on-law Veronica, and a young Bernard Hill taking the role of her very hen-pecked husband Edward. Amongst the more famous cast members, Clifford Kershaw gives an exceptionally convincing performance as the unlikeable but believable Jim Thornley. Tellingly, there's a scene in which he gets drunk and returns home, expecting sex; Mrs Thornley looks bored and pretends to be asleep, whilst he goes ahead anyway.
'Hard Labour' has aged well, a fact demonstrated to a new audience when it received a rare television repeat following Liz Smith's death. Mike Leigh has become one of Britain's most prolific and much-loved film directors, and this serves as a reminder that as impressive as his cinematic output has been, his respectable body of television work is also important.
Not a feel-good film in any way whatsoever
Red-Barracuda22 August 2014
Hard Labour was a TV film made for the 'Play For Today' series on the BBC. Mike Leigh was one of the most notable directors for this particular format and would go on to contribute the stonewall classics Nuts in May and Abigail's Party. Where those two had quite a bit of social commentary, they were comedies; Hard Labour, on the other hand, is anything but. It is instead a relentlessly depressing slice of life drama about the miserable lives of several working class characters in a bleak northern town.
It's a pretty experimental film in some ways, as it basically hardly has a plot of any kind; instead it adopts the approach that Ken Loach introduced with Up the Junction (1965), which he contributed for the BBC series 'The Wednesday Play', which was a format that predated 'Play For Today'. Loach's film also had really no story but was a slice of life of several working class people; with Hard Labour, Leigh did a similar thing but in a much more grimly downbeat manner. Both films do share a focus on extreme realism, with a complete absence of gloss of any kind. While I respect what Leigh was trying to do here, I can't honestly say I enjoyed this very much at all. It was too much of a downer, although I suppose that was the point. The cast all give good naturalistic performances, with especial praise due to a young Ben Kingsley, who was particularly good as a cabby who has a side line in connecting women with backstreet abortionists.
It's a pretty experimental film in some ways, as it basically hardly has a plot of any kind; instead it adopts the approach that Ken Loach introduced with Up the Junction (1965), which he contributed for the BBC series 'The Wednesday Play', which was a format that predated 'Play For Today'. Loach's film also had really no story but was a slice of life of several working class people; with Hard Labour, Leigh did a similar thing but in a much more grimly downbeat manner. Both films do share a focus on extreme realism, with a complete absence of gloss of any kind. While I respect what Leigh was trying to do here, I can't honestly say I enjoyed this very much at all. It was too much of a downer, although I suppose that was the point. The cast all give good naturalistic performances, with especial praise due to a young Ben Kingsley, who was particularly good as a cabby who has a side line in connecting women with backstreet abortionists.
Strange and wonderful glimpse of the past....
Trilby1610 April 2022
Not just this show but others I've watched of decades past in jolly old England are hard to date at first, as an American. You wonder, what era am I looking at? The 40's? The 50's? No! It's actually the 70's! So strange.
So much dreariness. People caught up in the sad details of surviving on just the bare minimum, as if concentration on the details is the only thing keeping them from stepping in front of the next bus.
Someone who has a tiny bit more than the next person feeling all la-di-dah in comparison. The hum-drum tedium.... How did they bear it? These are actors, right? It's hard not to see this as a documentary, it all seems too real.
But having this window into the soul of lower-working-class drab old England is mesmerizing. I don't know what made me try this series, but I'm hooked. I took one star off for the slower pace than I'm used to.
So much dreariness. People caught up in the sad details of surviving on just the bare minimum, as if concentration on the details is the only thing keeping them from stepping in front of the next bus.
Someone who has a tiny bit more than the next person feeling all la-di-dah in comparison. The hum-drum tedium.... How did they bear it? These are actors, right? It's hard not to see this as a documentary, it all seems too real.
But having this window into the soul of lower-working-class drab old England is mesmerizing. I don't know what made me try this series, but I'm hooked. I took one star off for the slower pace than I'm used to.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
