The Milgram family have not been together for three years, but now on Christmas Day son Nick (Sam Gittins) has resolved to try and let bygones be bygones and take his girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik) to meet his parents. He does warn her that they are not the most tolerant bunch, but she reassures him she will be fine, and on opening the front door, Nick's mother Beth (Abigail Cruttenden) tearfully welcomes him with open arms: but it's not his mother who is the problem. This Annji finds out when she is introduced to his father Tony (Grant Masters) and grandfather (David Bradley) - and the news on the television suggests this will not be a merry Christmas for anyone.
What would happen if, in one of his intensive acting workshops in pre-production on his latest film, one of Mike Leigh's domestic comedy dramas gradually turned insane? What if the critical darling decided he wanted to remake Videodrome in his own particular fashion? That's what you might get with Await Further Instructions, a grimly comedic, then downright bizarre state of the nation drama that perceptibly transforms into a science fiction/horror hybrid. To be accurate, the politics of this were vague enough to be interpreted at least a couple of ways, so there was a sense of the filmmakers hedging their bets depending on the outcome of then-current news headlines.
But the picture they painted of Britain suggested a Christmas get-together was not going to be enough to paper over the cracks of a politically and socially divided society; if the name of the family was not a big enough hint, then the hothouse in winter setting would make it clear director Johnny Kervorkian and writer Gavin Williams were using a metaphor here, locking up representatives of various British types and taking the worst case scenario that they would not set aside their differences for the common good and the state of their mental health, but instead would give into division and fail to seek a compromise, simply defining themselves by which parts of the culture they set themselves against rather than anything positive.
You could say that about plenty of countries as the nations of the world grew more insular in the twenty-first century, yet there was a move to keep this peculiar to the Brits, starting with those old prejudices of class and race, summed up in the unfortunate Annji who finds herself representing both those elements for the ignorant Milgram grandad and Nick's chippy, borderline moronic sister Kate (Holly Weston), who happens to be very pregnant. After an inevitably harsh exchange, Nick and Annji make up their minds to go to bed and escape the toxic home as early in the morning as they can get away with, but whoops, when they are about to head out they find they cannot. Not because of any guilt or second thoughts, they literally cannot because someone has built a barrier around the house consisting of what looks like impenetrable electrical tubing, ramping up the moodily-photographed yet perversely candy-coloured claustrophobia.
From there things only get weirder, with a heavy dose of cynicism about how far people get their opinions and instructions from the television, though as ever with an anti-media tract, it didn't deal with subtleties and admit there was plenty on the television that the makers would agree with as much as disagree with. For that reason this operated better on its metaphorical level, even taking in a Nativity parody so gruesome that it had to be a scabrous item of humour, though the real enemy may not have been the television that broadcasts sinister messages about quarantines and sleeper agents, but instead was the writer who would toy with his characters in such manipulative ways. The acting across the board was more than fine, with Weston especially a standout, always on the defensive because she believes Annji thinks she's better than her, which naturally she does when Kate's defence turns to offence. A sly nod to watching the Christmas Doctor Who as preferable to talking with your family might have been an in-joke since Bradley played the role the year previous, a little unfortunate that there wasn't such a show on that day the Yuletide this was released - they did a 2019 New Year's special instead. Music by Richard Wells.
