Abigail’s Party

An unexpected treat on BBC4 tonight with Mike Leigh’s ‘Abigail’s Party’, a classic comedy of manners, social sniping and cringing embarrassment from 1977 with a tour de force performance by Alison Steadman as Beverly, a character that seemed to reappear thirty years later, older and a little wiser, as Pamela, the mother and mother-in-law respectively of Gavin & Stacey.