Mick is a surly, pot-bellied, middle-aged publican whose English-village premises dishes up microwaved pies and undrinkable beer. The locals, whom he calls the “prawn-sandwich brigade,” prefer the pub which stands across the road, owned by an upper-class heir to an estate of one hundred and seventy pubs and multiple-award-winning microbrews. Mick passes many evenings in his bar arguing with one trembly regular who “is barred from every pub from Minehead to Mendip,” and does not budge from the place. Mick doesn’t think much of real-ale inspectors, who are scathing of both his customer-service skills and terrible product—“His demeanour is as bitter as the swill he serves.” His other problems are bailiffs, utility bills in arrears, suppliers who won’t deliver any more beer until their invoices are settled, a bank which is just about to repossess, and a son he despises.
A three-coach train snakes through the Somerset hills returning the handsome Prodigal Son. Cal is a middling musician; recognising him, his taxi driver makes more and more lewd suggestions. “Can we pull over?” Cal says. “I thought you’d never ask!” she says. But Cal would prefer to take his chances bearing his guitar aloft while chased across a field by the local bull than continue to listen to a woman who sighs and says, “I love a man who’s in touch with his feminine side.”
The humour is the strongest element of “Mother’s Pride” (Circus Studios), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse. A resident who spies Cal emerging from the bovine field says, “The man looks an absolute mess.” “Lots of rockstars dress like homeless people,” replies another. There are jokes about “middle-aged men in Lycra” (Mamils), such as “a man dressed like a jelly baby”; the outcome of the throw of the dice of life—“you became famous, he became a delivery driver”; and several well-timed lines in which Cal’s pre-teen niece asks, Daddy, what does [insert adult word here] mean? One afternoon. Cal’s brother, Jake, played by James Buckley, turns up late for the school run. The teacher suggests that his daughter has A.D.H.D. “Say she has it,” Jake says, “how would she have got it?” “It’s usually genetic,” Abi says. A pause. “I’ll have to have a think about who that could be,” Jake says, generating one of the biggest laughs of the afternoon in the Playhouse. On the occasions when a group of Morris dancers appears, we come to expect a wisecrack. One of their number wants to mix things up a bit by introducing versions of “Daddy Cool” and “D.I.S.C.O.” to the set. The real-ale judges are played as parodies of television-cooking-competition hosts—“wizards of the malt musicians…turning hops into happiness”; ”it doesn’t know what it is yet” (describing a beer); “this is like hugs in a glass, it’s really arousing”; “a sense of danger—but also a sense of safety!”
Teacher Abi, played by Gabriella Wilde, is also an ex- of Cal’s but is now going out with the rich landlord, Pritchard, played with delicious sneer by Luke Treadaway. “He may be rolling in it,” Jake says, “but he’s still a prize prick.” Pritchard plans his dastardly strategy; “I’m going to buy [their pub] at auction and leave it empty.” Cal fancies his chances at prizing Abi away from Pritchard’s roguery. “That’s the guy who dobbed us in to your mum for our very good fake ids,” he says. On a bridge running through the town, of the sort seen in Carrbridge, in the Highlands, she is smitten; “I listened to your song,” she says. “It was beautiful.” Several scenes later the niece will burst in on her teacher in bed with her uncle. “Oh, hello miss,” she says. “We’re so in trouble,” Cal replies.
These soap-operatics, although exaggerated for comedic value, seem honest. The biblical allegory of the returning Prodigal Son sits in the centre, orbited by the single parent son-who-stayed, the artful child who is suspended from school, the impact of debt on rural families, and the jealousy between two small businesses competing for an ever-decreasing slice of pie. The events in “Mother’s Pride” are fictional; but the characters reminded me of the village of Carrbridge, described in the comedy-non-fiction “The Golden Spurtle,” which I reviewed in September.
Actor Jonno Davies played Robbie Williams in “A Better Man,” which I reviewed in January, 2025 (although there he did not provide the face, which was a C.G.I.). Mr Davies delights his audience with the virtuosity of his singing and dancing and particularly his clear diction. A scene where he experiences a panic attack is outstanding. “Your mother would have been proud of you two coming together like this,” Mick says, as the brothers execute their cunning plan to solve the family’s problems by creating an eighty-percent-profit, award-winning beer. Their first attempt “could be classified as murder in a bottle.” But, as Jake says, “every successful brand has a story.” The brothers invent a “traditional method of going to market” suitable for “going on TikTok.”
The filmmakers are fond of hyper-segmentation into minute-or-two-long scenes, twining their various strands together into a story that hums along and comes to its happy close in little more than ninety minutes. Lengthening the landscape shots and using fewer moving drones would have settled the film and enabled, say, their female lead to be developed as more than a love interest. Still, when the locals come into Mick’s pub with their piggy banks, money is found under a mattress, and even the head barman at nasty Pritchard’s place “likes” one of the brothers’ posts, we can feel the joy of light-entertainment escapism. “Mother’s Pride” could be shown on ITV1 at 8PM.
Rehearsals for the new Morris-dance routines aren’t proceeding well. The dancers don’t take themselves seriously enough and director Jake isn’t impressed; “Next practice,” he says, “we’re going back to the ‘Highland Mary!’”
Adam Poole
8th March 2026
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