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Jeanie Dwight (Brenda Blethyn) works as a short-order cook in a Sydney cafeteria, but she used to be a comedy star and wishes she still was. Everything that's funny and sad about Introducing the Dwights, an appealing Australian comedy tinged with melancholy, springs from this simple fact. Jeanie may be a working-class single mother in her 50s, but her gargantuan need for attention gives her a mythical dimension. She's like Echidna, the mother of all monsters — half nymph, half snake. (Emotionally speaking, of course.)
Jeanie lives in a modest house in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney with her two sons, Mark (Richard Wilson), who suffers from a mental disability but knows his way around a bon mot, and Tim (Khan Chittenden), an exceptionally handsome but painfully introverted 20-year-old virgin. Jeanie is intent on reclaiming her former glory, now 25 years gone and all but forgotten, and Tim serves as her chauffeur, moral support and official joke tester while making payments on a moving truck to set himself up in business.
© Los Angeles Times
