The warm-hearted, hysterically funny satire — backed by a spine-tinglingly authentic soundtrack tells the true story of Mary Whitehouse, a moral watchdog barking at the heels of swinging England in the 1960s.
Shocked by a BBC program about premarital sex — broadcast at teatime — Mary Whitehouse rises from her quaint suburban life to do battle with the innovative, taboo-breaking head of the BBC, Sir Hugh Greene, played by Hugh Bonneville.
Hugh Bonneville as Hugh Greene, Julie Walters as Mary Whitehouse, and Alun Armstrong as Ernest Whitehouse
The object of her letter-writing campaign, BBC director general Sir Hugh Greene, responds that “provocation is healthy and socially imperative,” and he blithely refuses to respond to Mary’s criticisms. But he has met his match in “that demented housewife,” as he calls her.
Forty-five years after Whitehead began her campaign, the question of what is and what is not acceptable for broadcast television remains a hot issue. Though Mary Whitehouse died in 2001, and British television is more unbridled than ever, her pressure group survives under the name Mediawatch-UK — as does her legacy of spirited debate on the proper bounds of free speech, artistic expression and decency.
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