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Brenda Blethyn's histrionic inclination to overact doesn't really need the guiding hand of a an empathic director. It needs Stalin's rod of iron to rein her back.
Unfortunately, director Cherie Nowlan is no Uncle Joe. She's certainly no Lenin either. In fact, she makes Captain Mainwaring appear the model of discipline.
As a result, Blethyn is allowed to run amok in a scenery-chewing display that would draw admiring glances from the likes of Donald Sinden or Rod Steiger.
She plays Jean Dwight, a blousy, British-born divorced mother to the sexually-awakening Tim (Chittenden) and the mentally-impaired Mark (Wilson).
By day she works in a factory canteen but by night she transforms herself into "Melbourne's raunchiest homemaker", a club comedienne who can count Morcambe & Wise and Tommy Cooper among her contemporaries back when she trod the boards in Blighty.
© BSkyB
