The Rector's Wife

I was so impressed by Lindsay Duncan in the 1997 History of Tom Jones, in which she played a completely different type of role, that I searched for more of her work. This search led me to this exemplary drama, one that truly gets to the heart of a critical 'women's issue' : that of service wives, and the expectations they are quite unjustifiably subjected to with no real regard to their own wishes or desires. Duncan is absolutely superb in portraying a woman who is only slowly, and at times painfully, coming to grips with how far she has been distanced from her true self. The rest of the cast, particularly Prunella Scales, who I'd only known from Fawlty Towers, are superb. Her children, her husband, her would-be lover and her actual lover all deliver understated but poignant depictions of a life in which no one ever seems to get exactly what one wants: an astonishingly realistic representation of modern life.