It may be dour, but the film is also vital, edgy and progressive. It also must be noted that it’s very funny at times, in a brutal human comedy sort of way ('Good Thing' by Fine Young Cannibals plays over the end credits). To be put off by the uncomfortable themes, unglamorous urban location and pre...

I think part of my problem with this is that having grown up in a room and kitchen in a 1970s Glasgow tenement where we bathed in the sink, once a week, in water freshly boiled from the kettle atop the metred gas stove, I find these “northern” (English) tales of woe and misfortune all a bit melodram...