One of Mike Leigh's more scathing comedies pokes fun at the peculiar English tradition of class envy, a habit not limited to the British Isles but certainly more common in a country where the social polarities are so pronounced. The butt of Leigh's humor is a hapless clerk obsessed with the genealogy and manners of British peerage, and his pursuit of all things aristocratic is compared with the objects of his envy in a savage observation of the young idle rich at play. As usual in a Mike Leigh satire, character takes precedent over plot, and the title credit 'devised and directed by' reflects his method of allowing the actors to create their own roles, often achieving remarkably lifelike portraits through careful exaggeration.
