Warren Mitchell

Bernard Hill

Gary Waldhorn

Tony Westrope

Leo McKern

Denis Lawson

David Troughton

Phyllis Logan

Nigel Hawthorne

Anna Massey

Billie Whitelaw

Judy Parfitt

Maurice Denham

Rita Wolf

Herbert Norville

Carmen Munroe

Ron Pember

John Rowe

Matthew Blakstad

Charlotte Long

Jade Magri

Anne Tirard

Patsy Smart

Mark Dignam

Alex Tetteh-Lartey

Robin Summers

Vicky Licorish

Steven Woodcock

Paddy Joyce

Ben Onwukwe

James Coyle

George Rossi

Graham Jarvis

Darliah Wood

Kim Clifford

Michael Mulkerrin

Christopher Ettridge

Bill Thomas

Bob Holness

Jonathan Bates

Bill Blunden

Brian Simmons

Michael Kubicki

Sandra Shepherd

Jean Walter

Ray Barrett

Ross Carver

Nobby Clark

Peter Murton

Peter Manley

Dennis Brock

Michael Ford

Gary White

David Vroegindeweij

Peter Rees

Tudor George

Mick Monks

Gerry Anstiss

Christopher Lloyd

Wolfgang Suschitzky

A. Brock

Rita Wakely

Merriam Shear

Stewart Richards

Renée Glynne

Mary Fulton

Gary Cooper

Jack Gold

Jack Rosenthal

Stanley Myers

Irene Lamb

John Paul Chapple

Victor Glynn

David Deutsch

Comedy

Drama

The Chain

Film4 Productions

The Rank Organisation

Quintet Films & Television

United Kingdom

CinemaSerf

This is quite a cleverly interwoven series of scenarios following a series of people all moving house on the same day. We start at the bottom of the chain and work our way quickly and frequently quite pithily, through to the posh folks at the top of the chain - the ones who want to unscrew the light switches and remove the cemented-in garden furniture! They say moving house is amongst the most traumatic of events that befalls us (in peacetime, anyway) and Jack's Gold and Rosenthal have managed to assemble a solid cast of Brits to take us through their day of trauma and domestic nightmares via an avenue of prejudice, snobbery, kindness and plain mean spiritedness. Nigel Hawthorn takes the cake for me - the supercilious "Thorn" with long suffering wife "Betty" (Anna Massey) who insists on taking the ash from the fireplaces so he can fertilise his garden; but there are also engaging efforts from Maurice Denham, Billie Whitelaw with Bernard Hill and Warren Mitchell holding the narrative together nicely as one set of removals men. The humour is plentiful, but runs too much to stereotype for me. Very much of it's time - Mrs. Thatcher's Britain - it evokes a certain degree of disdain and nostalgia in almost equal measure, but it settles into a routine that becomes a tad predictable after a while. Still, it is an interesting concept that had it lost twenty minutes or so, could have been quite a pointed observation of human behaviour under varying degrees of pressure; self-imposed or otherwise.

English

The Chain - "Moving house is upsetting" pt2.m4v

The Chain - "Moving house is upsetting" pt1.m4v