The Ploughman's Lunch

First edition cover

For the type of meal, see Ploughman's lunch.

The Ploughman's Lunch is a 1983 film written by Ian McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre and featuring Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry and Rosemary Harris.

The film represents an studied analysis of the media world in Thatcher's Britain during the time of the Falkland's War. It was one of the first films to feature in Channel 4's inaugural 'Film on Four' season in 1982, enjoying a successful and critically lauded theatrical release prior to its television screening.

Ian McEwan's script uncovers a creeping moral and emotional decay in the values of its middle class, and it looks despondently on the nature of history, the cannabalism of the truth - for example in the advertising industry - and focuses on hungry, unhappy and at their core cynical people.

Plot

The films is set in London, Norfolk and Brighton, where the annual Conservative Conference is taking place. James (Jonathan Pryce) is an ambitious London-based BBC radio reporter, from humble origins but Oxford-educated. He has been commissioned to write a book on the Suez Crisis and undertakes this commission at the same time as the Falkland's War is starting to dominate the British media.

This, however, is just a backdrop to his attraction towards an upper class, rather snooty TV journalist named Susan (Charlie Dore), to whom he is introduced through his close Oxford friend (Tim Curry). Although he is persistent, he cannot get further than a late night kiss from her and so his friend suggests that he contact her mother, a prominent left-wing historian living down in Norfolk, and married to an wealthy and womanising advertiing executive (Frank Finley).

External links

• The Ploughman's Lunch at IMDb