Ploughman's Lunch

Produced by Simon Relph and Ann Scott and was made entirely on location in London, Brighton and Norfolk by Greenpoint Films Limited. It went on general release in Great Britain in 1983 and in the United States of America in October, 1984.

From the Creem magazine article "Elective Pop-ticians" by Cynthia Rose: "...a controversial new film called The Ploughman's Lunch, which stars a trio of pop-scene figures: The Rocky Horror Show's Tim Curry, Joni Mitchell-style songstress (of 'Pilot of the Airwaves') Charlie Dore, and Jonathan Pryce, the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest anti-hero Hamlet."

Reviewed by Michael Blowen in the November 9, 1984 Boston Globe: "The Ploughman's Lunch is not easy to sit through. It is a deeply disturbing, cynical movie shorn of any sentimentality. Yet, through brilliant performances by the cast, supported by Ian McEwan's terse script and Richard Eyre's lucid direction, this English import is one of the most searingly intelligent films of the year."

Reviewed by Vincent Canby in The New York Times on October 19, 1984: "...Almost as good as Miss Harris and Mr. Pryce...[is] Tim Curry as James's best friend, whose upper-class ease and self-assurance will forever elude James."

Reviewed by Thomas Elsaesser, date and publication unknown: "Apart from Jeremy, whom Tim Curry lends his customary dash of diabolical malevolence, nobody is given a chance to be just a trifle more interesting, complex, or human than the stereotype prescribes."

In his article "Favouring Curry" for Drama, 1986 Vol. 2, Andrew Rissik writes: "As Jonathan Pryce's louche but perfidious friend, Jeremy, in The Ploughman's Lunch he had a capacity for relaxation, a lazy self-confidence, that was absolutely lethal. In a malicious gem of a scene Curry sprawled at the back of a hall while an ernest friend read out a poem to a lugubriously-admiring audience. Fatuous question followed fatuous question, while Curry remained, poker-faced but evil-eyed, in the background. At length a humourless man stood up and asked the poet: 'What is the artist's role in society?' Curry exploded with a racking, eruptive laughter, a great bellow of healthy derision that, the night I saw it, got the biggest laugh of the evening...Curry stole the film from Pryce without difficulty."