The Full Monty

ITV

The Full Monty, USA, 1997

Director: Peter Cattaneo

Cast: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, Lesley Sharp, Emily Woof, Steve Huison, Paul Barber, Hugo Speer, Deirdre Costello, Bruce Jones

Peter Cattaneo and Simon Beaufoy's low-budget tale of unemployed Sheffield steelworkers putting on a striptease show stormed the box office on both sides of the Atlantic, and became one of the most successful British films ever made, taking over 52 million in the UK alone.

Unemployed friends Gaz (Robert Carlyle), a bitter but devoted divorced father, and Dave (Mark Addy), an overweight but dedicated husband, stumble upon a local Chippendales-style show. They decide to start their own strip act in order to make some quick cash, and to take their minds off the dole. They pick up new recruits Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), Guy (Hugo Speer), Lomper (Steve Huison) and Horse (Paul Barber) along the way, and several dance lessons (and a now famous practice in a dole office queue) later they are ready to perform, helped by advance publicity that they will do "the full monty" for their audience.

Cattaneo's film skillfully interweaves laugh-out-loud scenes with the tragedy of unemployment in the prime of life and the subject of men pawning their dignity for economic survival, while Beaufoy's script delivers the right measure of social commentary on the plight of the unemployed in Thatcher's Britain.