Nuts in May (Mike Leigh) 1976 BFI Blu Ray
Hard to think of many comedy films set on a campsite. There may be some interesting European cinema out there, especially from the camping enthusiast nation of France, but I’ve not come across it. The British Carry on Camping sorely stands out for being a crude caricature. We have to return to 1976 and Mike Leigh’s hilarious TV play Nuts in May all about a camping trip that goes horribly wrong. Yet even here Mike Leigh’s tent and its occupants are homing in on a repression and hysteria that upsets the British not just when they’re on holiday, but most days.
Roger Loman is perfectly cast as Keith the control freak. And equally so is Alison Steadman as Candice Marie his more relaxed but long suffering wife. They book into a Dorset campsite for ten nights. They have some good daytrips and are pleased with their location. Yet their peace is broken by the arrival of a student teacher whose radio blares out pop music from Radio 1. Then a couple arrive on a motorcycle and immediately go on a drinking spree with the teacher and disturb Keith and Candice with some noisy lovemaking in a tent. Finally they start an unauthorised campfire causing Keith to violently intervene.
The highlights of Nuts in May are: Keith and Candice Marie playing a banjo and guitar to their singing of a banal ditty called I want to get away; the antagonistic exchange of looks between them over who should look at the maps and structure a day trip; Keith’s
anger and jealously when he sees Candice Marie enter the student teacher’s tent to innocently exchange guide books; an unsuccessful attempt to persuade a stonemason to let them buy a piece of stone containing a dinosaur fossil and most cringing and funny of all is Keith and Candice Marie getting the embarrassed student teacher to join in with the chorus of another of their dreadful songs.
Being Mike Leigh there is a dark undercurrent of pain in his comedies. And in Nuts in May we have a powerful eruption of despair and anger in the form of Keith attacking the motorcycle couple for having started an illegal camp fire. He yields a large branch and warns them that they must keep to the rules of the country code. Keith doesn’t hit anyone but breaks down and weeping runs off to be alone. Sympathies are split between the anarchism of the campers and Keith’s collapse of sensible, though repressive, order. The veneer of civilised behaviour is severely tested.
Nuts in May proved to be an influential BBC TV play. And it’s hard not to think of it as being the wilder and darker underside of a series like the hugely popular The Good Life: here for Mike Leigh getting back to nature and being eco-friendly can be a fraught business. It’s all sharp dead pan humour without any irritating knowingness or patronisation. Beautifully observed, written and acted Nuts in May feels spontaneous and improvised. Yet that was only the case in rehearsal. Everyone rigorously kept to a tightly crafted script and delivers so well.
A very funny film now 50 years old with a seventies zeitgeist but also timeless in depicting the absurd rituals of life on holiday where at any moment anyone, anywhere could just go nuts in May!
Alan Price©2026
Nuts in May (Mike Leigh) 1976 BFI Blu Ray
Hard to think of many comedy films set on a campsite. There may be some interesting European cinema out there, especially from the camping enthusiast nation of France, but I’ve not come across it. The British Carry on Camping sorely stands out for being a crude caricature. We have to return to 1976 and Mike Leigh’s hilarious TV play Nuts in May all about a camping trip that goes horribly wrong. Yet even here Mike Leigh’s tent and its occupants are homing in on a repression and hysteria that upsets the British not just when they’re on holiday, but most days.
Roger Loman is perfectly cast as Keith the control freak. And equally so is Alison Steadman as Candice Marie his more relaxed but long suffering wife. They book into a Dorset campsite for ten nights. They have some good daytrips and are pleased with their location. Yet their peace is broken by the arrival of a student teacher whose radio blares out pop music from Radio 1. Then a couple arrive on a motorcycle and immediately go on a drinking spree with the teacher and disturb Keith and Candice with some noisy lovemaking in a tent. Finally they start an unauthorised campfire causing Keith to violently intervene.
The highlights of Nuts in May are: Keith and Candice Marie playing a banjo and guitar to their singing of a banal ditty called I want to get away; the antagonistic exchange of looks between them over who should look at the maps and structure a day trip; Keith’s
anger and jealously when he sees Candice Marie enter the student teacher’s tent to innocently exchange guide books; an unsuccessful attempt to persuade a stonemason to let them buy a piece of stone containing a dinosaur fossil and most cringing and funny of all is Keith and Candice Marie getting the embarrassed student teacher to join in with the chorus of another of their dreadful songs.
Being Mike Leigh there is a dark undercurrent of pain in his comedies. And in Nuts in May we have a powerful eruption of despair and anger in the form of Keith attacking the motorcycle couple for having started an illegal camp fire. He yields a large branch and warns them that they must keep to the rules of the country code. Keith doesn’t hit anyone but breaks down and weeping runs off to be alone. Sympathies are split between the anarchism of the campers and Keith’s collapse of sensible, though repressive, order. The veneer of civilised behaviour is severely tested.
Nuts in May proved to be an influential BBC TV play. And it’s hard not to think of it as being the wilder and darker underside of a series like the hugely popular The Good Life: here for Mike Leigh getting back to nature and being eco-friendly can be a fraught business. It’s all sharp dead pan humour without any irritating knowingness or patronisation. Beautifully observed, written and acted Nuts in May feels spontaneous and improvised. Yet that was only the case in rehearsal. Everyone rigorously kept to a tightly crafted script and delivers so well.
A very funny film now 50 years old with a seventies zeitgeist but also timeless in depicting the absurd rituals of life on holiday where at any moment anyone, anywhere could just go nuts in May!
Alan Price©2026
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, comedy, film • Tags: Alan Price, comedy, film