Bethlehem Hospital is the legendary establishment which gave rise to the phrase “bedlam” – its title has been reapplied, with out apparent irony, to a fictional geriatric hospital in Yorkshire for this mild, shrewd ensemble comedy, tailored by screenwriter Heidi Thomas from the much-admired 2018 stage play by Alan Bennett with a brand new Covid-aware coda bolted on to the top. Richard Eyre directs with a certain hand.
The “Beth” is a small neighborhood facility which has attracted donations from celebrities after whom varied elements of the constructing are named: the movie is usually set within the Shirley Bassey ward. However it’s dealing with closure from hardfaced Whitehall bean-counters who need large cost-efficient hospitals or glitzy “centres of excellence” with measurable success charges. Humble, unglamorous geriatric care is nevertheless about susceptible sufferers who’re heading only one method, and their remedy crucially entails kindness and compassion which don’t have anything to do with the underside line.
Russell Tovey performs Colin, a Division of Well being advisor with exactly these prejudices who has to return and go to his ailing ex-miner dad Joe (David Bradley) on the Beth, a cantankerous outdated man who has by no means been capable of settle for his son’s identification as a homosexual man. There aren’t any prizes for guessing if Colin’s angle to each the hospital and his dad goes to thaw – and certainly his preliminary, shrill attachment to the federal government line is fairly broadly written.
Elsewhere on the ward, Judi Dench performs Mary, a retired librarian with a ardour for cataloguing fairly than books, however a eager curiosity in marginalia: the readers’ revealing scribbles together with the web page. Extra genuinely bookish is the haughty former instructor Ambrose (he prefers the vintage phrase “schoolmaster”) performed by Derek Jacobi who broods over the Charles Causley poem Ten Sorts Of Hospital Customer. Julia McKenzie is a girl with dementia whose daughter and son-in-law are determined to maintain her alive for a couple of extra months for inheritance tax causes (once more, a barely broad characterisation, which could have labored higher on stage than on display screen). Jesse Akele is the indomitably cheerful Nurse Pinkney. Bally Gill performs the genuinely caring Dr Valentine and Jennifer Saunders is the formidable, no-nonsense ward sister Gilpin who runs a good ship.
Maybe the considered a veteran Brit character-actor lineup in a care setting is just a little mawkish, and I by the way nonetheless have grim reminiscences of Dustin Hoffman’s unsufferably patronising 2012 movie Quartet with Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins and Michael Gambon.
However this watchable, undemanding drama rolls alongside capably, enlivened by unmistakably Bennettian gags and drolleries which come alongside each minute or so. Marvelling at a brand new invention known as an iPad, Dench’s librarian purrs: “It’s no thicker than a month-to-month periodical!” Colin asks the work expertise child (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) wheeling round a trolley of large-print books: “Do you wish to really feel my ft?” The sullen teen replies: “It’s not prime of my listing.”
The ostensible goal and that means of the movie is in fact to proclaim the worth of the NHS, though you may argue that this religion is barely deflected or undermined by the massive narrative reveal – impressed by well-attested actual life circumstances. However the brand new Covid part on the finish, with its surprising pivot to drama and disaster, works nicely sufficient. A low-key, enticing, if minor Alan Bennett.