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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 253418" data-attributes="member: 23">Pat and Margaret(11th September 1994) <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/18382/production/_114920299_pat_margaret.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> <img src="https://iv1.lisimg.com/image/11498536/600full-%26quot%3Bscreen-one%26quot%3B-pat-and-margaret-screenshot.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Where to begin with this one. Vic’s first feature-length film since Happy Since I Met You, some thirteen years earlier. Even without factoring in Victoria’s writing, the premise itself is a winner: glossy American soap star returns to her native England to promote a book only to find herself hoodwinked into a live television reunion with the frumpy younger sister she hasn’t seen since leaving twenty seven years earlier. We first meet waitress Margaret finishing a shift at the motorway service station. She and her friends are off on a coach trip to watch a live television show being filmed. Everything about the introduction tells us what kind of character she is. She’s last ready because she’s waiting for chips to be cooked. And she keeps her work shoes on because “they’re comfy”.Then we flash back to two little girls outside a council house. The younger of the two, aged perhaps three, sits on a tricycle with an ice cream, while a dark haired girl of perhaps seven or eight parades along the pavement with sunglasses and what appears to be her mother’s high heels, handbag and bead necklace. She takes the younger sister’s ice cream as she passesPat is everything Margaret is not. Julie Walters is terrific playing the hard as nails diva we first meet, giving a perfunctory autograph to two old women who are huge fans, while managing not to look them in the eye, speak to them or smile at them. As she tells her new assistant in the aftermath:She then goes on to chew out the floor runner of the little television show in which she’s appearing, threatening to fire her for her impertinence, while reminding her:On the surface, the film is about chalk and cheese. A collision of two worlds that simply can’t co-exist. At least, that’s how it begins. But it becomes so much more. Great as Julie’s reactions are when Pat realises she’s been set up and outed as someone with humble beginnings and a family of whom she feels ashamed, it’s Victoria Wood who absolutely nails Margaret as she watches the show play out from the audience, smiling in anticipation of watching someone getting a nice surprise while not considering for a moment that the surprise is on her. When host Maeve mentions the Kirkby Preston Motorway Service Area Cafeteria, Margaret looks amazed and leans forward to look along the aisle and see one of her friends surprised. Everything about that moment is perfect. I love the way she goes to take her jacket and then as the runner leads her to the stage she turns and puts it on her chair. As she sits on the sofa, photos of her childhood on the screen for all to see, Margaret’s shock turns to something else. It’s difficult to read, and very subtle, but there’s a pain behind her eyes that’s tangible. (continued)</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?