Description
And a Nightingale Sang DVD
No of discs: 1. Year: 1989. Colour. Running Time: approx 96 mins.
Cast: Joan Plowright, Phyllis Logan, Pippa Hinchley, John Woodvine, Tom Watt & Stephen Tompkinson.
The course of true love runs less than smoothly in Jack Rosenthal’s celebrated TV drama, adapted from the play by British playwright C.P. Taylor. And a Nightingale Sang strikes a chord with its bittersweet and humorous portrait of working-class family life on the British Home Front in Newcastle during World War II. Despite air raid sirens, gas masks, ration books and whistling bombs interfering with their everyday lives, the Stott family remain stoic and focus on keeping life as normal as possible. Joan Plowright is the beleaguered, church-going matriarch, who finds herself drawn to her priest. John Woodvine plays her husband, who escapes from awkward family situations by banging out popular tunes on the piano. Phyllis Logan plays Helen, their sensible 30-year-old daughter. Pippa Hinchley plays her young sister, a flirt who is attracted to every soldier except her husband (Stephen Tompkinson). In this heart-warming household misery and happiness mingle, reminding us that in the face of adversity, humanity will keep calm and carry on loving.
Extras: three short public information films from the Imperial War Museum: They Keep the Wheels Turning (1942); Britannia is a Woman (1940) and The New Britain (1940).
