‘A murderously funny mix of Wodehouse and Hitchcock, a sort of What Ho! Psycho…. The ingenious deceptions of After Pilkington, exploding in a shower of exhilarating complications, make you whistle…. The moral of this highly immoral tale is that, if you fall in love, you will get it in the neck, possibly with a pair of pinking scissors…’ Nancy Banks-Smith in The Guardian.
After Pilkington was first broadcast by BBC Television on 25th January 1987. It won the Prix Italia in 1987.
The cast was as follows:
JAMES – Bob Peck
PENNY – Miranda Richardson
DEREK – Barry Foster
BORIS – Gary Waldhorn
DEIRDRE – Mary Miller
AMANDA – Reina James
WILKINS – Richard Brenner
POTTS – John Gill
DOCTOR – Nigel Nevinson
YOUNG PENNY – Sarah Butler
YOUNG JAMES – Richard Grant
PILKINGTON – Derek Ware
Director: Christopher Morahan
Producer: Kenith Trodd
Costume Designer: Catriona Tomalin
Film Cameraman: Andrew Dunn
Sound Recordist: Graham Roff
More reviews
‘After Pilkington (BBC 2)… this highly entertaining transgression of genres, expectations and good taste… is about pace, timing, twist and plot, the whole schizophrenia of storytelling… To this end, Miranda Richardson and Bob Peck have supplied a kind of hyper-realism which seals the box tight, if not the coffin. The whole mad machine works like a dream… The film holds hilarious humour and considerable excitement in unusual tandem.’ Hugo Williams in the New Statesman. READ MORE
‘A hilariously mischievous black comedy. Built upon a richly witty Simon Gray screenplay italicised by director Christopher Morahan with Hitchcockian order alprazolam online deftness, it offered four stunning performances… Bob Peck, Barry Foster and Gary Wildhorn, as three permittedly crackpot Oxford academics, and Miranda Richardson as the barking-mad murderess linking and shaping their fates, acted out their nightmare farce as if this were normal behaviour in a normal world, and it was just this disparity between what they did and how they did it which brought laughter welling to the throat.’ Mail on Sunday
‘Simon Gray’s Screen Two play After Pilkington (BBC 2) was an exercise in chronic and helpless mendacity that exploited every farcical twist engendered by that vice while gradually darkening into infantilism, murder and madness… Director Christopher Morahan varied the pace from a breathless dash to a dead-slow, deliberate prowl round dangerous corners… Bob Peck expressed equal parts of tenderness and panic as an ordinary man filled with a passion unmatched since he was 10. Miranda Richardson was beautiful, bruised and imperious as though Violet Elizabeth Bott had grown into Lady Macbeth… Drama of this excellence deserves a BFI grant and a showing on big screens.’ The Independent
PUBLISHING INFORMATION
After Pilkington is being published as a Faber Contemporary Classic in Simon Gray: Plays 4 on July 7th 2010. To order a copy on special offer at 25% discount (using code GRAYPLAYS) please contact Faber.
After Pilkington is also published in the following editions:
The Definitive Simon Gray Volume IV (Faber and Faber 1993 ISBN 0-571-16659-8)
After Pilkington (Methuen 1987)