A mother lies dying in a hospital bed. A middle-aged daughter comes and goes. In between these last visits, there is remembered life. Celia Imrie as the mother and Tamsin Greig as daughter give immense performances, their relationship abrasive yet loving.
Imrie is the queenly, self-absorbed and peculiarly child-like Beth, who has an edge of Blanche DuBois. She is a nightmare mother, insisting on living with her daughter in university student digs and telling her all about her sex life. Greig breathes compassion into the stoic Bo, which is a challenging part to play: we see her across the ages, from the harried mid-life daughter of the present to a six-year-old learning to swim, a shouty 18-year-old, then later confiding in her mother about an abortion, a job as a scriptwriter, the adoption of her child.
