4 Movies Starring Alison Steadman

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Shirley's a middle-aged Liverpool housewife, who finds herself talking to the wall while she prepares her husband's chip'n'egg, wondering what happened to her life. She compares scenes in her current life with what she used to be like and feels she's stagnated and in a rut. But when her best friend wins an all-expenses-paid vacation to Greece for two, Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.

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Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.

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Orphaned by smallpox, young Lancashire country lady Fanny Hill cheerfully accepts her friend Esther Davies's offer to join the London 'working girls' with Mrs. Brown, a madam who recruits her as charmingly fresh enough to wait, in-living, on gentlemen. The first night, her room- and bed-mate Phoebe starts her sexual 'education', next she revels in being fitted her first-ever fancy frock. Her first 'client', Mr. Crofts, is neither naive nor attractive, rather a paying old rapist who isn't satisfied. Then the party scene, where men are younger and more charming. Handsome merchant's son Charles Standing declares love at first sight and offers to take Fanny away. After a few heavenly days of young love, they intend to demands Sir's blessing for their marriage, but as the ogre actually was her unsatisfied customer, Charles is made to choose between her and his future and leaves for colonial India. Being destitute, Fanny accepts becoming the kept woman of Mr. H., an earl's wealthy brother, in a fine London home with domestic staff, but since she won't give her heart he finally bangs her maid - Fanny seduces as 'revenge' her footman William. Both are dismissed. Fanny goes to Mrs. Cole's hat-shop, only to find it's a front for an upper-class whorehouse, a place where fathers even bring their sons to shed virginity with a virgin girl, a part Fanny plays well even though it breaks young Percy's heart. When she arrogantly scorns Mr. H, he has the whorehouse closed down; Fanny barely escapes, but without a dime. Alone on the street, her single act of kindness wins her a sick old rich man's favor, graduating from guest over house maid to companion and sole heir when he dies a few months later. Just then Charles returns...

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In every comedy generation, Britain has produced quality double act after quality double act. Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore, the Two Ronnies, French and Saunders... the list goes on. Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are now known as two of the world's most popular figures in entertainment, enjoying solo success (in Stephen's case) writing, performing and broadcasting, and (in Hugh's case) award-winning US drama. But it's easy for a new generation of comedy fans to forget that at the start of their careers they worked together as one of the nation's most popular comedy double acts. This UK premiere celebrates the 30th anniversary of the pair working together. Back in 1980, Fry and Laurie met for the first time at Cambridge University, introduced by their mutual friend Emma Thompson, and quickly became the torchbearers for the established Footlights comedy and performing troupe. They were the perfect combination - Stephen was tall, awkward and an expert straight man, while Hugh was a physical comedy whirlwind. They found themselves at the forefront of the new alternative comedy movement in the early 1980s and reaped the benefits, finding fertile ground in which to showcase their talents - they won the inaugural Perrier Award at the Edinburgh festival in 1981, they frequently appeared in the ground breaking Saturday Night Live, they starred together in Blackadder, and their own series, A Bit Of Fry And Laurie, ran from 1989 to 1995. Now, in Fry And Laurie Reunited, the pair talk exclusively about their friendship, their personalities and talk through some of their favourite sketches. With plenty of clips and rare material, this is the ultimate celebration of two of Britain's favourite sons.