Cream in My Coffee (1980)

If the traditional British ‘summer holiday’ ever really existed outside of postcards and creative nostalgia then by the year 1980 it was long into retirement. But the hotels endure and it’s to one of them that an ageing couple return, having spent time there in 1934. Past and present weave together to paint a bigger picture, and through extrapolation we can write the forty-six summers that fell in-between.
Potter's venomous wit lightens some scenes, but mostly it’s a serious study of the destructive nature of secrets, the ennui that often follows marriage and the promises that love makes to please itself.
Lionel Jeffries is good as the old man who wants to live in the here and now but can’t help referencing the past. Peggy Ashcroft is hand on heart amazing as the sympathetic wife who fears to ruffle feathers.

4 pennies dropped out of 5