Days of the Bagnold Summer

"Days of the Bagnold Summer" (2020) is a British indie comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Simon Bird — best known as Will from The Inbetweeners — made his directorial debut here, adapting Joff Winterhart's graphic novel. Earl Cave plays Daniel, a thrash-metal teenager who was supposed to spend the summer in Florida with his dad. The trip was cancelled at the last minute. Six weeks at home in the English suburbs with his mum Sue, a librarian, is what he gets instead.

Monica Dolan plays Sue with an understated precision that refuses any easy sympathy bait: she's not a comic foil, just a woman who doesn't know how to talk to her teenage son, and he doesn't know how to talk to her either. The film is mostly about that — two people sitting near each other in silence, trying. Tamsin Greig and Rob Brydon in support. Stream "Days of the Bagnold Summer" (2020) on iFILM.