It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in.
Acting
Veteran cast nails drunken desperation and stubborn pride.
Writing
Alan Bleasdale's dialogue is vicious, tender, and riotously funny.
Director
Peter Smith
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in a real Liverpool pub during the 1984-85 miners' strike; the desolation on screen was literally outside the door.
Bleasdale wrote it after his father, a Catholic in Protestant Liverpool, was killed in a sectarian attack—making the comedy his weapon against cycles of hate.
GB
