I just want you to know I went and watched Saving Grace tonight thanks to your post and it was absolutely delightful. The music, the town, the surprise Bill Bailey, the best pair of sproingy fake glasses ever put on screen. I loved every minute of it. I want to make a double feature evening and watch it again with Greenfingers immediately
OK so I just want YOU to know that this ask a) made me realise Saving Grace and Greenfingers were both released in the same year?? What a year for Gardening & Crime movies! There was something in the water!
and b) it made me go and rewatch Greenfingers just now, what a great double feature idea. Absolutely prime early-career Clive Owen. Post those breakout British TV roles, pre-Gosford Park, working that classic Clive Owen vibe of 'the less he says, the more magnetic he is'. He's 50% legs, 50% wordless intensity, and the suggestion (though rarely demonstration) of violence. Also Helen Mirren is there! And lots of shots of high summer Cotswold gardens.
Saving Grace though - absolutely everyone, every side character, every bit part, literally everyone on screen is TOP SHELF. Watch Craig Ferguson (also writer!) go off on some spectacular high speed scottish rants! Watch Phyllida Law get absolutely shitfaced! Watch Diana Quick be Diana Quick! Martin Clunes literally launching an entire 'doctor in Cornwall' TV franchise with the strength of his scenery eating! Technically sold as a comedy but like all great British ones it's a little bit sad, and there's a bittersweet shadow sort of creeping in at the edges, which just makes it more lovely.
