Storyline
The true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who ‘temporarily’ parked her van in Bennett’s London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Jim Broadbent, Roger Allam, Stephen Campbell Moore, James Corden, Marion Bailey, Jamie Parker, George Taylor, Maggie Smith, Dermot Crowley, Dominic Cooper, Sam Spruell, David Calder, Claire Foy, Frances de la Tour, Rosalind Knight, Alex Jennings, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Eleanor Matsuura, Russell Tovey, Pandora Colin, Sacha Dhawan, Nicholas Burns, Deborah Findlay, Richard Banks, Samuel Barnett, Gwen Taylor, Elliot Levey, Samuel Anderson, June Watson, Aaron Neil, Jessica Bastick-Vines, Cecilia Noble, Clare Hammond, Sam McArdle, Giles Cooper, Harriet Thorpe
Trailer
Reviews
83
It’s simply a very well done movie that features Maggie Smith’s best work in years (and, yes, she’s better here than any of her years on “Downton Abbey”).
80
Smith’s performance, honed from the previous stage and radio versions, is terrifically good.
80
A wonderful Maggie Smith plays all this dead straight, poker-faced for maximum laughs. It’s a peppery, unsentimental performance. She’s hysterically funny, till she’s not – flooring you as the regret and tragedy behind Miss Shepherd’s vagabond life is revealed.
80
Empire
Unshowy to a fault, Hytner delivers a fine, moving comedy of English manners between a writer and his eccentric tenant, which slowly deepens into an exploration of human bonds.
80
Village Voice
It's an honest and incisive and peppery examination of one of his life's strangest but most enduring relationships — and the way that timidity and kindness often work out to being the same thing.
