Clarke's only feature to "make it" in America was a ribald comedy about a ménage-à-trois. But what a trois! It took a Britisher-the actor, George Costigan, who played Bob-to pinpoint the real humor in the film, which is that it is terribly unsexy. "You'd have to have been barking mad to get turned on by it," he said. This is also its sadness, as Rita and Sue-school chums who babysit for Bob and Michelle and good naturedly take turns with Bob on the way home-seem somehow to know that this is as good as it gets. Savage social commentary is never far behind Alan Clarke's ever-anxious Steadicam and Rita, Sue and Bob Too is no exception: the Yorkshire backdrop, with its shabby "estates" with the fancy names, its grim unemployment, and its barely recognizable family units, makes this on-again, off-again three-way friendship seem like tenderness itself.