Withnail & I

Two ‘resting’ actors living in a squalid Camden Flat – and living off a diet of booze and pills – take a trip to a country house (belonging to Withnail’s uncle) to ‘rejuvenate’. Faced with bad weather, altercations with the locals, and the unexpected arrival (and advances) of Uncle Monty, the pairs wits and friendship are tested…
Set in 1969, the year in which the hippy dreams of so many young Englishmen went sour, 1986’s Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I is an enduring British cult. Withnail is played by the emaciated but defiantly effete Richard E Grant, “I” (i.e., Marwood) by Paul McGann. Out-of-work actors living in desperate penury in a rancid London flat, their lives are a continual struggle to keep warm, alive and in Marwood’s case sane, until the pubs open. A sojourn in the country cottage of Withnail’s Uncle Monty only redoubles their privations.