The Ploughman's Lunch

''The Ploughman's Lunch'' is a 1983 British drama film written by Ian McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre which features Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry, and Rosemary Harris.

The film looks at the media world in Margaret Thatcher's Britain around the time of the Falklands War. It was part of Channel 4's ''Film on Four'' strand, enjoying a critically lauded theatrical release prior to the television screenings.

Plot

James Penfield is an ambitious London-based BBC radio reporter, from humble origins but Oxford-educated. He is commissioned to write a book on the Suez Crisis, claiming not to be a socialist; at that time, the 1982 Falklands War is dominating the British media.

He is attracted to Susan Barrington, an upper class, rather snobbish TV journalist, to whom he is introduced by his Oxford friend and fellow TV journalist, Jeremy Hancock. Although he is persistent, he cannot get further than a late night kiss from her and so Jeremy suggests that he contact her mother, prominent left-wing historian Ann Barrington, who lives in Norfolk and is married to advertising film director Matthew Fox. It transpires that Ann wrote an article on the Suez Crisis on its tenth anniversary and James wants to seduce the daughter by befriending the mother.

Claiming to be a socialist, James soon finds himself spending more time with the mother than her daughter; they have several long discussions and also take long walks on the Norfolk Broads. Meanwhile, his mother is dying and, having earlier said to Susan that his parents are dead in order to disguise his origins, he is forced to identify her only as a relative when his father contacts him while he is with Ann. Returning to London, he is forced to ask for help from members of a women's peace camp after suffering a puncture. Initially mistaken for another BBC man, he shows some feigned sympathy towards the group protesting against the use of force outside a Norfolk airbase. Visiting Norfolk again a week later with an uninterested Susan, James walks alone with Ann Barrington who kisses him and later enters his bedroom and has sex with him.

Caught up in this love triangle, James returns to his work in London. Over a beer and pub ploughman's lunch with Matthew Fox, Fox consents to James making love to his wife, given that they have slept in separate beds for the last three years. James refuses to take calls from the mother when she attempts to contact him at the BBC
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