British Comedy Guide

Secrets & Lies

  • 1996 film

Mike Leigh's comedy drama in which an adopted optometrist sets out to find her birth mother. Also features Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Claire Rushbrook, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan and more.

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Key details

Genre
Film
Released
1996
Stars
Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Claire Rushbrook, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth Berrington, Michele Austin, Lee Ross and more
Writer
Mike Leigh
Director
Mike Leigh
Producer
Simon Channing Williams

When Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn't expect that it will lead her to Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), a desperately lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family.

Additional details

Production
Studio
Picture
Colour
Soundtrack
Music by Andrew Dickson.

Website links

Broadcast details

All previous repeats
  • Monday 1st March 2021 at 12:55am on Film4

Recording details

  • London - Filmed entirely on location in and around London

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