SMALL ACTS, BIG REWARDS (A FRIEND OF DOROTHY)

A FRIEND OF DOROTHY

Right from the moment Stephen Fry appears onscreen, you can see why Academy voters were swayed enough to nominate the English 21 minute comedy 'A Friend of Dorothy' for Best Live Action Short.

A sweet natured tale of an unlikely friendship between Miriam Margolyes' pensioner Dorothy and Alistair Nwachukwu's Afro-Caribbean teen JJ, Lee Knight's short has a cheeky title for a start.

It has two British national treasures as well in the shape of Margolyes and Fry.

But there's also a delightful English eccentricity to it.

In Knight's short, Margolyes' Dorothy Woodley first encounters JJ after he kicks a football into her back garden and knocks on her door to retrieve it.

Inviting him inside her house to retrieve the ball on condition that he also opens a can of prunes for her, they quickly bond as he waits for her to retrieve her keys and marvels at her collection of plays in her bookcase.

Noticing his interest, Dorothy elicits from JJ that he would like to be an actor and she encourages him to read aloud a scene from EM Forster's 'The Inheritance'.

Revealing she and her late husband used their fortune to fund local theatre groups, she encourages JJ to visit her daily and practice his acting.

When she passes away, JJ encounters hostility from her obnoxious grandson, Oscar Lloyd's Scott before the reading of her will by Fry's executor Dickie.

But is Scott's hostility necessary?

What develops is a charming tale about friendship across different generations and backgrounds and a common love of the theatre.

Vibrantly shot by Vanessa Whyte, Knight's short boasts eye catching production design by Amanda Bernstein, lively art direction by Noa Goda and well chosen costumes by Fracisco Rodriguez-Weil.

It's the kind of sweet natured short that might just woo Academy voters just like Terry and Oorlagh George's comedy 'The Shore' in 2012 or Tom Berkeley and Ross White's 'An Irish Goodbye' in 2023.

A lot of that is down to Margolyes, Nwachukwu, Fry and Lloyd's perfectly judged performances.

But actor, writer and director Knight also has an eye for a memorable image and a cheeky sense of humour that you hope he will continue to explore in future projects behind the camera.

As a directorial calling card, 'A Friend of Dorothy' is a pretty damn good one.

('A Friend of Dorothy' was premiered at the Raindance Film Festival on June 25, 2025

Comments

HOUSE OF FUN (LOL: LAST ONE LAUGHING IRELAND)

© Amazon Prime Ever wondered what the 'Big Brother' house would have been like if it was populated just by comedians? No? Neither had I. But Amazon Prime has tried to answer that question anyway with a new comedy show 'LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland'. © Amazon Prime Originally conceived by the Japanese comic Hitoshi Matsumoyo in 2016, the show throws 10 stand-ups together in a 'Big Brother' style living room for six hours with the strict instruction that they are not allowed to laugh, crack a smile or smirk at each other's jokes or anything else. If they do, the first time they falter they get a yellow card warning. The second time, they receive a red card and are out of the game. The comedian who outlasts the others wins. © Amazon Prime Versions have been produced in Mexico, Italy, Iran, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Russia, Nigeria, Colombia and France. And with a UK version reportedly in the works, Amazon has decided to test the waters with an Irish...

LAST ONE STANDING (TRUELOVE)

© Channel 4 & Clerkenwell Films Channel 4 drama at its very best is edgy. Its finest miniseries are not afraid to tackle big issues or whip up controversy. Think Alan Bleasdale's ' GBH ,' Simon Moore's ' Traffik ,' Alan Plater and Chris Mullin's ' A Very British Coup ,' Jack Thorne's ' National Treasure ,' Dominic Savage's ' I Am ..' dramas, Shane Meadows' ' The Virtues ' or Russell T Davies' ' It's A Sin .' These have tackled everything from the international drug trade to homophobia and AIDS, from sexual abuse to manipulation of the left wing. © Channel 4 & Clerkenwell Films 2024 has begun with another Channel 4, drama taking on a huge issue - assisted dying and the treatment of senior citizens. 'Truelove' is the creation of 'End of the F**king World' writer Charlie Lovell and Iain Wetherby and it raises uncomfortable questions. The six part miniseries begins with five fri...

TWO TRIBES (KINAHAN: THE TRUE STORY OF IRELAND'S MAFIA & GERRY HUTCH: AKA THE MONK)

From ' Public Enemy ' to ' The Irishman ,' ' The Sopranos ' to ' This City Is Ours ,' it seems we can't get enough of tales about gangsters on the big and small screen. Ireland has also had quite a few TV shows and movies about crime gangs in its time from ' The General ' to ' Calm With Horses ,' ' Love/Hate ' to ' KIN '. Sometimes, though, the grim storles of what real life crime gangs get up to is just as fascinating. That is especially true of two recent docuseries about rival sides in a feud that spectacularly erupted on the streets of Dublin - RTE1's 'Gerry Hutch: AKA The Monk' and BBC1's 'Kinahan: The True Story of Ireland's Mafia'. The feud between the Kinahan and Hutch gangs is probably best known for the shocking gun attack on a boxing weigh-in in Dublin's Regency Hotel in February 2016 . However the fallout claimed the lives of 18 people. There were lots of other casualties ...

Pomona for Facebook

Search This Blog