Film

Meantime

Name: Meantime
Genre: Drama, Comedy, TV Movie
Released: 1983
Cast: Phil Daniels, Tim Roth, Jeffrey Robert, Pam Ferris, Gary Oldman

Other titles called Meantime: the series in development (Sky One).

Social drama

A black-and-white portrait of a working-class East End family rotting under Thatcher-era unemployment. Meantime is grimly funny, deeply uncomfortable, and utterly alive—full of small cruelties and sudden tenderness. It's for anyone who wants British social realism that actually stings, directed by Mike Leigh with a cast (Oldman, Roth, Daniels) before they became names.

TMDb rating

3.4

If you liked this

Kes1970

Ken Loach's companion piece to Meantime's rage: a boy's friendship with a hawk becomes a rebellion against a suffocating working-class world. Shot with documentary precision and genuine heartbreak.

But The pacing is measured and the ending deliberately offers no redemption—if you want momentum or hope, it won't deliver.

This Is England2007

Shane Meadows captures the same claustrophobic post-industrial despair, this time through skinhead subculture. Raw, angry, and populated by characters who feel like they're actually breathing the same air as you.

But It builds toward violence and real ugliness—the beauty is in the observation, not in what happens.

Raining Stones1993

Ken Loach again, this time about a Manchester father trying to scrape together money for his daughter's communion dress during the early '90s recession. Tender and exasperating in equal measure.

But The camera dwells on small failures and humiliations. It's patient in a way that can feel punishing if you're looking for catharsis.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Meantime

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Stalker1979

Both are patient ensemble studies about men unable to escape themselves, trapped by circumstance (one economic, one metaphysical). Both suggest that stagnation can be a kind of knowledge.

Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi meditation on desire and regret. Nothing happens, everything matters. Like Meantime, it's a portrait of people stuck—emotionally, spiritually, geographically—but mystical rather than social realist.

But It's slow, wordless for stretches, and philosophically demanding. If you watch Meantime for British grit and dialogue, this will feel like a different language.

Billy Elliot2000

A boy's desperate need to dance against his father's working-class expectations during the miners' strike. It has Meantime's class anger but channels it through joy and ambition instead of paralysis.

But It's more sentimental and dramatically shaped than Leigh's naturalism—if you want messiness over narrative satisfaction, it won't scratch that itch.

My Beautiful Laundrette1985

Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi capture '80s Britain through a South Asian entrepreneur and his white working-class lover. Sexy, furious about Thatcher, and structurally inventive in ways that sneaks up on you.

But It's playful in tone when you might expect it to be grim, which some viewers find disrespectful to its own subject matter.

Secrets & Lies1996

Mike Leigh's masterpiece about class, family, and the lies we tell. Three hours of ensemble naturalism that ends with everyone in a room, and it matters. All conversation, no plot, utterly hypnotic.

But The length and the refusal of conventional drama might feel self-indulgent if you're not already in Leigh's corner.

Made in Britain1983

Alan Clarke's film about a violent young skinhead in care—raw, confrontational, and Tim Roth's debut. It has Meantime's documentary bleakness and a protagonist who's genuinely difficult to like.

But The violence is casual and shocking rather than cathartic, and the film offers absolutely no sympathy. Some will find that bracing; others won't.

The Naked Civil Servant1975

John Hurt as Quentin Crisp—a completely different social outsider, but same era, same Britain, same bewildered officials and casual cruelty. A portrait of survival through refusal.

But It's from the '70s and it shows; the pacing is formal in a way that can feel distant compared to Meantime's immediacy.

I, Daniel Blake2016

Ken Loach's return to the theme: a man destroyed by welfare bureaucracy in modern Britain. Angrier and more explicit about villainy than Meantime, but the same core of watching systems crush people.

But The righteousness is louder and the characters more archetypal—it trades Leigh's ambiguity for clarity, which some find didactic.

Funny Games1997

Both are naturalistic films about ordinary people trapped in spaces where cruelty becomes casual. Both refuse to make suffering entertaining, which is the entire point.

Michael Haneke's Austrian home-invasion film mimics a thriller's surface while interrogating your appetite for violence. Black-and-white and claustrophobic, it makes you complicit in watching people suffer.

But It's deliberately antagonistic toward its audience and morally punitive—watching it feels like being scolded, which can feel pretentious or exhausting.

Chungking Express1994

Both films are portraits of emotional paralysis (one social, one romantic) set in specific cities at specific moments. Both use visual language and performance to convey things that can't be said aloud, and both insist that smallness and ordinariness contain profundity.

Wong Kar-wai's neon-soaked Hong Kong love story—color, music, fragmented narrative, cops and unexpected tenderness. It's about loneliness and connection in a fast city, observed with painterly precision.

But The aesthetic is deliberately artificial and the structure is poetic rather than linear—it's the opposite of Meantime's documentary style, so the connection might feel obscure.