Estate agents never have a nice day in English comedies, and George Phillips (Dave Allen) is no exception. Yet among Alan Bennett heroes he perhaps is an exception: doleful, yes; checked-out, goes without saying; but this sensitive man is less a victim of who he is than of who they are. Saddled with a white elephant that threatens his place in the pecking order of a large real estate firm, he parlays the property into a base for rebellion. Set to the strains of Italian opera that waft from Phillips's headphones and sometimes his head, this is the most cinematic of the Bennett/Frears collaborations, breaking away (like Phillips himself) from the office jungle to explore the nature of a London skyline.