She's Been Away (1989)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Television Film

Series Title: Screen One (1989-1994)

Director: Peter Hall

Writer: Stephen Poliakoff

Cinematographer: Philip Bonham-Carter

Composers: Stephen Edwards, Richard Hartley

Cast: Peggy Ashcroft, Geraldine James, James Fox, Jackson Kyle, Rebecca Pidgeon, Rosalie Crutchley, Rachel Kempson, Hugh Lloyd, Donald Douglas, Brid Brennan

Poliakoff’s uncomfortably funny and occasionally brilliant if often merely silly television play paints a portrait of Lillian, a woman in her late seventies, who has been in a mental institution for 60 years, as she is returned – when her ward is closed permanently – to society and her family home, much to the chagrin of her pregnant niece-in-law, who herself is in the midst of some sort of breakdown. Iain.Stott