Film

A Taste of Honey

Name: A Taste of Honey
Genre: Drama
Released: 1961
Cast: Rita Tushingham, Murray Melvin, Paul Danquah, Dora Bryan, Robert Stephens

Coming-of-age

A black-and-white slice of early-60s Manchester life, adapted from Shelagh Delaney's play (written when she was nineteen), following a working-class teenager left pregnant and mostly alone, finding unlikely tenderness with a gay art student. Frank for its time about race, sexuality and class without ever losing its wit or warmth — for anyone who wants British social realism with a soft, defiant heart.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love black-and-white British realism that finds warmth in shabby rooms, where a sharp young lead and a bruised, funny friendship carry the weight.

Skip it if you want brisk plotting or easy comfort, since this moves slowly, stays bleak for long stretches, and refuses to soften a hard working-class life.

What it asks of you: Just over a hundred minutes, unhurried, with long quiet stretches and abrupt tonal swings, asking you to sit with small domestic friction over big set pieces.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning1960

The film that kicked off British New Wave: Albert Finney as a mouthy factory worker refusing to be ground down by Nottingham's grey Monday-to-Friday grind. Same rawness, same refusal to look away from ordinary lives.

But More interested in male swagger than in Jo's quiet stoicism; less tender, more combustible.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning poster

Billy Liar1963

Tom Courtenay's fantasist office clerk daydreams his way out of a stifling Yorkshire town — funnier than Honey but cut from the same cloth of thwarted young ambition and class ceilings.

But Whimsical where Honey is plain-spoken; if you wanted grit, this drifts into daydream.

This Sporting Life1963

Richard Harris's rugby player channels rage and tenderness into brutal matches and a doomed romance — the same unsparing eye on working-class emotion, just with more violence thrown in.

But Heavier, angrier film; lacks the wit and lightness Honey finds even in hardship.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Taste of Honey

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Love on the Dole1941

Same Northern industrial poverty, same daughter forced into impossible choices by economic desperation — the tradition Delaney's play grew out of, just with the polish stripped off.

Two decades before the New Wave got credit for 'kitchen sink' realism, this Depression-era Manchester drama about poverty, pride and a daughter's compromise was already doing it — and doing it starkly.

But Stagier, more melodramatic dialogue; the moral finger-wagging of its era is more visible than in Honey.

Kes1970

Ken Loach's Yorkshire schoolboy and his kestrel remain the gold standard for unsentimental British social realism — the same tenderness toward a young person society has already written off.

But Even bleaker ending; go in braced, not for comfort viewing.

Fish Tank2009

A modern update filtered through Andrea Arnold's handheld camera — teenage girl, absent-ish mother, a dangerous flirtation with an older man, same class trap, decades later.

But Rawer, more sexually charged, more contemporary aggression; not a period-piece comfort watch.

Secrets & Lies1996

Mike Leigh's tale of a Black woman searching for her birth mother handles class and family secrets with the same warmth-under-hardship Delaney perfected — funny, painful, humane.

But Longer, more ensemble-driven; less about youth, more about middle-aged reckoning.

Ratcatcher1999

Lynne Ramsay's Glasgow slum childhood carries Honey's poetic eye for beauty amid squalor — tender, strange, visually gorgeous despite the grim postcode.

But Slower, more elliptical; almost no plot in the conventional sense.

My Beautiful Laundrette1985

Another British outsider love story that crosses lines society didn't want crossed — this time race and sexuality collide in Thatcher's London with real wit and warmth.

But More overtly political and 80s in its energy; less interested in quiet melancholy.

A Kind of Loving1962

Another kitchen-sink tale of an unplanned pregnancy trapping two young working-class people together — plainer, quieter, a good companion piece to Honey.

But Fairly slight compared to Honey's boldness; solid but unspectacular rather than a discovery.

Up the Junction1965

Same milieu and stakes as Jo's — unplanned pregnancy with no safety net — pushed into the specific crisis Honey only gestures toward, and made partly by Ken Loach, working in Delaney's shadow.

A single, since-legendary BBC play, shot almost like documentary, about young working-class women, casual sex and a backstreet abortion in Battersea — as blunt as British television got before the law changed.

But No stars, rough video texture, barely an hour — this is a historical jolt, not a polished drama.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too1987

Same class, same North of England, same teenage girl navigating adult men and pregnancy scares — but told as riotous comedy instead of tragedy, testing how far the story can bend before it breaks.

Two Bradford teenagers, one married man, zero shame — a filthy, hilarious, deliberately trashy inversion of the 'fallen girl' story, made by people who grew up on exactly the realism Honey pioneered.

But Genuinely crude and cheerfully amoral where Honey is tender; the comedy about exploitation is hard to sit with now.