Funny Cow (15)
Directed by Adrian Shergold

THIS gritty and unrelenting drama, steering seamlessly from tragedy to comedy, charts the rise to stardom of stand-up comic Funny Cow.

She describes herself as having a funny bone for a back bone as the film explores her life through the 1970s and 1980s in poignant flashback vignettes.

Screenwriter Tony Pitts, who also plays Funny Cow's abusive husband Bob to terrifying effect, wrote the part especially for Maxine Peake whose powerhouse performance drives this complex, anarchic and irreverent drama. Funny yet heartbreaking, she's a woman determined to succeed in a male-dominated profession.

Adrian Shergold's direction and Pitts's razor-sharp screenplay captures the brutal chauvinism of the club circuit as well as the racism and sexism prevalent and accepted at that time, reflected in TV shows such as Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language. Such “comedy” would be baulked at today.

Funny Cow's stand-up routine, ruthless and hard-hitting, is at times excruciatingly painful to watch but it's brilliantly delivered by Peake, aided by a sublime supporting cast. Alun Armstrong is superlative as her no-nonsense, jaded mentor and manager Lenny, while Stephen Graham is frighteningly menacing as her violent father and Macy Shackleton and Hebe Beardsall are captivating as Funny Cow's troubled younger versions. But Paddy Considine looks uncomfortable playing against type as her pseudo-intellectual middle-class lover.

Pitts describes Funny Cow as an unblinking obituary and unsentimental commentary to a culture that he grew up in. It's also a stark reminder of how far comedy has come in terms of gender equality, although you may think it still has some way to go.