This filmed television play is so good it is almost certain the BBC will repeat it. Although quintessentially English in context and tone, it might also sell abroad. Watch out for it. A fascinating short story, spun into an excellent film through fine writing, good direction and impeccable acting into a real treat.

The always reliable Timothy Spall is here simply superb. He firmly establishes the character of the grumpy, withdrawn, nerdy middle-aged, religious teacher Mr Harvey with very little, early on, to work with - dialogue or action. Ably supported by the never-better Celia Imrie, as atheist long-time colleague Miss Davies, they share the school trip from hell to Salisbury Cathedral, led by younger teacher Mr Cole (Ben Miles) whose rather less contemplative approach to life puts him closer in age and attitudes to their rambunctious 6th form charges.

It gradually emerges that the ostensibly educational purpose of the trip disguises a deeply personal significance for Mr Harvey. His only relationship with this distinctly motley crew of rebellious students, is as a figure of fun and mockery - nicknamed with intentionally cruel irony, 'Mr Happy'. The students comprise a full set of adolescent horrors: rampant hormones, self-harming, a little light drug-taking, scab-picking aggression by a graffiti spraying 'bomber' towards a dutiful Muslim student; and general apathy and indifference to the trip and its purpose. This is wittily expressed through the harmless but distinctly non-deferential extemporised ongoing rap commentary by three cheeky but malice-free black students.

This controlled chaos, not untypical of school trips of this kind, is balefully witnessed and pejoratively commented upon throughout by the perfect coach-driver for a trip from hell. Overlong, lank, greasy hair, an ill-concealed distaste for students and most things in life, anyone who has ever organised coach trips will immediately recognise this archetypal go-on-make-me-laugh character.

Within this noisy, brittle, abrasive context, writer Rhidian Brooks skillfully allows unlikely relationships to emerge which touch on deep and painful, but very real emotional distress. On a trip to see a building that is one of the most beautiful monuments to faith in Britain, two ill-matched characters arrive together at a far better insight into their respective emotional lives: profoundly immune, as Mr Harvey puts it, to being Ofsteded or measured. Each in their own way, at different ends of life, find a kind of hope to replace despair through their contact with each other.

This is a funny, moving, thoughtful little film well worth the second showing I hope the BBC will give it.

Zettel 2005

Hi Z, thanks for another fine review. I also really enjoyed this, although I missed the beginning and only saw it from when Mr Happy began searching for his wallet on the coach. Timothy Spall just gets better and better. He doesn't even need to speak, as his face is so expressive. Did you see him in Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet as Aubrey, a hapless restaurateur who cooked liver in lager (or was it lucozade)? Mr Happy reminded me of him in some ways.

This film said so much about the ways in which we hurt one another, often without meaning to. Did his wife stop and think about the effect her actions would have on him, or was she too wrapped up in her own intolerable pain?

Adele.

Hi Ad

Thanks for the comments. Didn't see the Leigh film but Spall is a perfect actor for him. Leigh's an odd director I find: obviously very good: but somehow I sort of feel guilty for not feeling up to another dose of his grey, social realism. And coming from what used be called a 'working class background' my antennae are hyper-tuned to his occasional tendency to sentimentalise what used to be called the 'working class' - they may need many kinds of help but that isn't one of them.

Glad you liked the play - me too for all the same reasons.

Regards

Z