Actress Judi Dench co-directs this made-for television adaptation of John Osborne's ground breaking stage play - set only in the grotty bed-sit the protagonists live in. Jimmy (Kenneth Branagh), university educated articulate and poor, is angry with almost everything and everyone from the government and the church to his long suffering wife (Emma Thompson). He now works in a sweet shop, and his bitterness and frustration with life is released on his wife in the form of aggression. But when Alison's best friend Helena (Siobhan Redmond) arrives on the scene, things begin to change.