Alison Steadman Movies
Trained at the East 15 Acting School, British actress Alison Steadman worked as a secretary for the Liverpool Probation Service before making her professional stage bow in 1968. Five years later, Steadman made her London theatrical debut. She won a plethora of awards for her rendition of the title role in both the stage and film version of Abigail's Party. This and several subsequent productions were directed by Steadman's former husband, Mike Leigh. She has starred in the British TV series Wackers (1975) and Gone to Seed (1992), and has made a number of conspicuous film appearances since her 1982 screen debut in Kipperbang. American TV viewers will remember Steadman as Mrs. Marlowe in the wildly eccentric Dennis Potter miniseries The Singing Detective. More recently, Alison Steadman was seen as Mrs. Bennet in the 1995 British TV-miniseries production of Pride and Prejudice. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Abigail's Party originally aired as part of the BBC's influential Play for Today series. Writer/director Mike Leigh was responsible for several productions for the series, as was Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective). This filmed play was developed the same way most of Leigh's work has been -- in improvisatory workshops with the actors. It was also performed on-stage before it was filmed for television. It's a character-driven social satire. Alison Steadman (Leigh's wife, who has appeared in many of his films) stars as Beverly, the obnoxious, manipulative host of a small gathering of neighbors. Tim Stern plays Laurence, Beverly's career-driven, joyless husband. The couple has Angela (Janine Duvitski), a talkative nurse, and Tony (John Salthouse), her taciturn husband, for a visit, along with Sue (Harriet Reynolds), an unfailingly polite and timid divorced woman whose 15-year-old daughter, Abigail, is having a party that night. Beverly begins drinking and smoking before anyone else arrives, and doesn't stop throughout the night. She sets her sights on Tony the moment he walks in the door. She flirts openly with him. Laurence objects ineffectually, while Angela seems almost to encourage Beverly's interest in her husband. For his part, Tony doesn't say much. He's ill at ease, and seems to be in a very bad mood. Sue is also uncomfortable among these people, and preoccupied with what's going on at her own house. She allows Beverly to goad her into drinking until she gets sick. At one point (at Beverly's urging), Tony and Laurence go over to Sue's house to check up on things, but the reassurances they offer upon their return are unconvincing. The tension between Beverly and Laurence grows. As she taunts and belittles him, he objects to nearly everything she says and does, and the evening heads toward disaster. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Keith (Roger Sloman) and Candice Marie (Alison Steadman) take a trip to a campsite in the English countryside. They're folk-singing vegetarian types, but Keith is very controlling, and Candice Marie is manipulative as well, in her own childlike way. Keith is also very anal, taking down every expenditure in a ledger, using his various guidebooks to lead them through every attraction, and refusing to diverge from his detailed plan for their trip. "What's the point of having a schedule if you don't stick to it?" he asks. He rushes ahead of Candice Marie, and she struggles to keep pace. The couple spends a good deal of time trying to find a dairy farm that will sell them unpasteurized milk. Their idyll, such as it is, is interrupted by the arrival of Ray (Anthony O'Donnell), a geology student, who disturbs the couple by playing his radio. Candice Marie goads Keith into confronting Ray, but Ray refuses to turn off his radio, so the couple move to a new location a bit further away. Returning home from one of their day trips in the rain, the couple stops to offer a ride to a pedestrian who turns out to be Ray. Keith refuses to speak to him, but Candice Marie makes polite conversation, and soon decides that Ray is "nice." Candice Marie's attempts to be social infuriate the quietly jealous Keith. But he goes along when she invites Ray over for tea, and the couple bullies Ray into joining them in a little singalong. But things are shaken up again when a couple of young bikers, Finger (Stephen Bill) and Honky (Sheila Kelley), show up flouting the "country code." Nuts in May was written and directed (or "devised and directed") by Mike Leigh for the BBC program, Play for Today. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- 1975
Ken Jones starred in this British sitcom as ne'er-do-well Billy Clarkson who, after being released from jail, returned to his home in Liverpool. Determined to go straight, Billy first tackled the problem of riding herd over his large and boisterous family. Not only were his relatives evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants, they also bickered endlessly over the relative merits of the Liverpool and Everton football clubs. The Wackers ran for six episodes, which aired from March 19 to April 23, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ken Jones, Sheila Fay, (more)
Mrs. Thornley (Liz Smith) leads a rather miserable existence in Salford. She lives with her husband, Jim (Clifford Kershaw), a night custodian at a toy factory, and their grown daughter, Ann (Polly Hemingway). Mrs. Thornley is a maid who works for an imperious upper-middle class woman, Mrs. Stone (Vanessa Harris). Between her work and her home life, it seems like Mrs. Thornley is always cooking, cleaning, and fielding complaints. Jim spends most of his spare time at the pub, and is pretty cold to his wife, drunkenly demanding sex from her once a week on the night he's not working. Jim's efforts to ingratiate himself to his supervisor, Mr. Shaw (Keith Washington), are met with a stony lecture about dressing properly on the job. Ann, meanwhile, has been spending her time trying to arrange an abortion for her friend Julie (Linda Beckett) with the help of a friendly Pakistani taxi driver, Naseem (an early turn by Ben Kingsley). The couple's son, Edward (Bernard Hill, who would later play Théoden in Lord of the Rings) seems to care about his mum, but his wife, Veronica (Alison Steadman, in the first of many performances for writer/director Mike Leigh), is a snob who constantly harangues him about his manners and looks down on his family. Mrs. Thornley, beaten down by her wearying existence, eventually seeks solace from a local priest. Hard Labour, Leigh's follow-up to Bleak Moments, was originally produced for the BBC's Play for Today series. It features an appearance by Alan Erasmus (who would become a major figure in the Manchester pop scene), portrayed by Lennie James in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liz Smith, Alison Steadman, (more)
- 1962
The incredibly durable cop show Z Cars (pronounced "Zed Cars") was one of the great guilty pleasures of British television -- a program which everyone watched, but no one would admit to watching. Created by Troy Kennedy Martin, the series focused on a "typical" crime-ridden Liverpool police precinct. The cars driven by the law-enforcement officers were all Ford Zephyrs, hence the series' title. Understandably, there was a huge cast turnover during the series' 16 years on the air, with some of the original regulars leaving early on to star in the spin-off show Softly Softly. Debuting in a weekly 25-minute slot in 1962, Z Cars had expanded to 50 minutes weekly by the time its run ended in 1978; 667 episodes were filmed in all -- an astronomical figure by anybody's standards, even American television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stratford Johns, Frank Windsor, (more)
