Of late, I have been enjoying the works of talented British actress, comic, writer, Joanna Scanlan. On TV, she can do it all. She won awards for her work on Getting On, a Britcom that ran from 2009 to 2012. She brightens any quiz shows on which she appears, such as Would I Lie to You? which is on Britbox and other sites, and she won a BAFTA for her lead performance in After Love from 2020.
Scanlan has appeared in such popular films as Carol and Girl with a Pearl Earring. She stars in the AcornTV and Britbox detective drama No Offence as a Manchester D.I., a great series which ran from 2015 to 2018. She currently plays Moira Tregorian in the much-talked about series Slow Horses, which I look forward to seeing.
Two standout pieces of Scanlan’s work are Getting On and After Love. Along with co-creators Jo Brand and Vicki Pepperdine, she wrote and stars in this dark sitcom. The show ran for fifteen half-hour episodes. The scene is a ward in an NHS-National Health Service hospital. The beds are taken mainly by elderly ladies, some of whom have dementia, some of whom need a good meal.
Scanlan plays the head nurse in the ward; Jo Brand (one of the smartest and funniest comics in Britain), plays a lower-level nurse. Vicki Pepperdine is Dr. Pippa Moore, a sometimes funny/sometimes nasty character who likes whatever power she can yield over the staff and patients.
Getting On is quite realistic, with plots that stress health problems, economic woes, and workplace difficulties. It’s very entertaining, and available on a host of streaming sites.
After Love puts Scanlan in an altogether different role. Very serious. No laughs here. It’s the first feature written and directed by British filmmaker Aleem Khan. Khan was nominated in three BAFTA categories. For some reason the film was overlooked by the Oscar committees.
Scanlan plays Mary Hussain, a middle-aged wife living in Dover, England. She is a Muslim convert, whose loving Pakistani/British husband dies suddenly.
From her husband’s text messages, Mary ascertains that he was connected intimately to a woman across the Channel in Calais. Soon she boards a ferry and turns up at that woman’s doorstep. To her surprise, her late husband had had many years with a secret unofficial wife. There even is a teenaged son. Through accidental circumstances, Mary insinuates herself into his second family. And so the plot of After Love unfolds.
After Love would be a quality film with its strong points of Scanlan’s performance and Khan’s well-told story. But there is more to appreciate here. Khan uses textured shots of nature, cliffs and the sea, to set the moods of his tale. This film is beautifully shot and artfully edited. After Love premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020, received very positive reviews, but distribution was hurt by the COVID crisis. It’s rentable on Prime Video.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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