Pat and Margaret

Pat and Margaret (1994)

Unexpected events occur when Pat, a glamorous British-born star of American soaps, returns home to plug her auto-biography on television and meets, for the first time since they were teenagers, Margaret her plain and frumpy younger sister. The meeting is painful for both women highlighting the vast differences in their lives and resurrecting painful memories of their unhappy childhood with an uncaring, errant mother. The tabloid press smell a juicy story and a race ensues to trace the whereabouts of the long lost parent.

Date of release
1994-09-11
TMDB
7.7 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 24m
Genres
Drama, Comedy, TV Movie
Director
Gavin Millar

Casting

Interesting facts

Pat and Margaret is a British television film written by comedian Victoria Wood. The story follows sisters Margaret, a cook, and Pat, a successful actress in the United States, after they are reunited on a television programme after spending 27 years apart. It stars Wood and her frequent comedy partner Julie Walters in the title roles, and features other past collaborators of Wood, including Thora Hird, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston. First aired in 1994 on BBC One, the film was directed by Gavin Millar and produced by Ruth Caleb.

Production

The film was created and written by Wood, whose last full-length drama was Happy Since I Met You in 1981. It was directed by Gavin Millar, recommended to Wood by Julie Walters, and produced by Ruth Caleb. Wood was accustomed to a level of control over the direction of her scripts, which led to frustration with Millar, who at one point told her, "Go away [and] let me do it", and on another occasion reminded Anne Reid, "[Victoria's] not directing t…

An early draft of the script was rejected by LWT, who told Wood, "A film is not a sketch, you know." The script underwent significant changes between the second and third drafts, as Wood worked in material "possibly suggested by [her] sessions of therapy", such as her own issues stemming from maternal abandonment, assisted by script editor Robyn Slovo.

In 2010, the film was adapted as a 90-minute radio drama, starring Sarah Lancashire as Margaret and Tracy-Ann Oberman as Pat. The cast also included Wood's frequent collaborators Imelda Staunton, Thelma Barlow, and Philip Lowrie. It aired on BBC Radio 4 as a Christmas Day special.

Motorway services – Heston services on the M4

Peacock Productions studios – BBC Elstree Centre

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