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The Fifty-seventh Saturday
Veteran character actor Ronald Fraser plays a middle-aged man trapped in the dull routine of his Saturday-afternoon love affair.
Director: Alan Clarke
Overview
Veteran comedic character actor Ronald Fraser (known in his later years as the ‘Lord of Love’ on TFI Friday) plays a middle-aged man who visits his younger lover ,Mavie (Frances White), every Saturday afternoon for the latest stultifying instalment of an illicit affair. But despite their grudging acceptance of the tryst's grubbiness, Mavie longs to develop their relationship along more conventional lines.
This highly perfunctory portrayal of a romantic affair could only come from the pen of a British writer, and it was author William Trevor who provided the script for this episode of Half Hour Story directed by Alan Clarke. The play was in fact a follow-up to an earlier instalment featuring the same characters, The Forty-Seventh Saturday, which appeared in print and as a radio story. Alan Clarke’s direction is notable for its frank and occasionally eccentric intimacy, featuring the kind of ‘up-the-nostril’ shots which contemporaneous TV critics found grating, but which demonstrate the director’s bold approach to the material.
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