Bridie (Brenda Fricker), a lonely farmer’s daughter, goes to the country ballroom where, as a young girl, she danced and dreamed of a happy marriage. Now, surrounded by younger, livelier women, she decides that she has suffered the indignities of spinsterhood long enough and vows that tonight will be her last bid to find a husband. But the eligible men have all emigrated or are already spoken for and loneliness threatens to drive her into the arms of drunken Bowser Egan (John Kavanagh).
This is a rare chance to see Pat O’Connor’s film of William Trevor’s short story. One of the finest Irish TV dramas of all time, it is a perfectly observed evocation of the desolation and despair of Irish country life in the 1950s. Fricker is outstanding as a woman stoically resigned to her fate.

See also The Swallow.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn