Overview

The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.

Cast

Stephen Archibald

Jamie

Hughie Restorick

Tommy

Jean Taylor Smith

Grandmother

N/A

Karl Fieseler

Helmuth

Bernard McKenna

Tommy's father

Paul Kermack

Jamie's father

Helena Gloag

Father's mother

N/A

Ann Smith

Jamie's mother

Eileen McCallum

Nurse

N/A

Helen Rae

Bus conductress

N/A

James Eccles

Man singing