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You are not likely to see a larger performance all year than Brenda Blethyn's portrayal of Jean Dwight in Introducing the Dwights. Fortunately, Blethyn's overacting is in the service of a character who lives for attention, whether it's from the customers of the Australian nightclubs and showrooms where she works as a bawdy comic or from her two sons, who love and fear her.
Jean was a something of a female Benny Hill in Britain before she emigrated to Sydney with ex-husband John (Frankie J. Holden), a beefy Jim Reeves-style country singer. When his efforts to get a hit record failed, he took a job as a security guard, but Jean, while forced to take a day job in food preparation, continues to play clubs and convention shows in the hinterlands, chauffeured by her 20-year-old son, Tim (Khan Chittenden).
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