Plot

The film takes place in the 1950s in the suburbs of London. The film depicts the hypocritically prudish residents of a seemingly respectable household who, behind closed doors, indulge in the sort of sordid goings on they would publicly sneer at.

Marjorie Beaslie (Walters) is a housewife in her forties who takes in a lodger named Harold Guppey (Graves), who has just stumbled into town to look up his long-lost brother (played by Les Dennis).

Although seemingly prudish (she no longer sleeps in the same bed as her husband, for “medical reasons”), Marjorie takes a liking to Harold despite him being a good twenty years her junior.

They begin to have a clandestine affair, sneaking into bed together at night. Ever since taking in her lodger, Marjorie insists that Harold refer to her as “mum”, giving more than a little oedipal slant to their subsequent lustful antics.

Marjorie’s youngest daughter is fourteen-year-old Joyce (Sadler), a precocious, Loltia-like girl who alternates between trying to act grown up by putting on make-up and smoking cigarettes, and acting childish by grossing people out with tales of medieval punishments and giggling at rude words.