The concept is essentially what if Margot Leadbetter and Dot Cotton got together and went on the lam.
June Brown filmed this from one of her sabbaticals from Eastenders. She plays Gladys the working class housecleaner for snobby Margery (Penelope Keith) who has been recently widowed.
Both flee one evening when Margery hits a teenage burglar with a crystal vase on the head. They think he is dead.
They hit the road as they head for Milton Keynes but now have no money for petrol or to pay for hotels. Luckily, Gladys is streetwise while Margery is aghast to suddenly lead a life of crime.
The journey lead to some surprising revelations as the women look for two elderly women who had suddenly gone missing.
Gladys has some secrets to hide from Margery and it is not that she forged her references. Margery's cleanliness obsessed son also mentions that his late father had something of importance in the Blackpool coast.
Margery learns that her marriage was not as perfect as she thought. In Blackpool she finds out that her husband was planning to sail the seven seas without her.
This is a mismatched comedy drama part inspired by the true life case of Tony Martin. A man who shot dead a burglar. What was little mentioned in the press that he was a fascist that sort of enticed the burglars and waited for them with an illegal but loaded weapon.
There is quirkiness with Martin Freeman as an obsessed but incompetent policeman. Roger Lloyd-Pack as the more astute detective inspector.
On the road to Blackpool, Margery and Gladys encounter George Formby and Elvis impersonators.
More bizarrely, in Blackpool there is a childhood friend of Margery's husband hanging about sort of randomly with his bike. He is from Rochdale and he seemed to have no home to go to. Just being conveniently there.
At times I found the premise too thin and laboured. Credibility was stretched too many times.
