The Tender & Acerbic Nostalgia of Withnail & I

Easily one of the most tender yet acerbic, loving yet sarcastic, and hysterical yet desperate stories you’ll ever watch, Bruce Robinson’s 1987 autobiographical Withnail and I has always been one of my top five all-time movies. The story of two out-of-work and down-on-their-luck actors in London’s Camden Town at the tail end of the sixties, it features some of the best (and most quotable) dialogue ever to be put on screen, as well as outstanding performances from the two main protagonists, Richard E. Grant (The Player, Gosford Park, The Rise of Skywalker) as the entitled, dramatic Withnail, and Paul McGann (Doctor Who, Alien 3, Holby City) as ‘I’, who is never referred to by name in the movie, but who we know from Robinson’s screenplay is called Marwood.

The plot is simple. Two actor friends, living in extreme squalor and ‘reduced to the states of a bum’, strung out on drink, drugs and the end of the sixties party, decide to take a mental and physical break from it all at Withnail’s uncle’s cottage in the countryside. Escaping the local wankers and all of London’s desperate, crumbling, drug-addled trappings is not just what they want, but what they need. Convincing Withnail’s flamboyant and eccentric Uncle Monty, brilliantly and at times, terrifyingly played by Richard Griffiths (Harry Potter series, The History Boys, Sleepy Hollow) to lend them the key through…