Calendar Girls

When a group of Yorkshire ladies took their kit off for a Women's Institute calendar to make enough money to donate a proper sofa to the visitor's room at the local hospital, the world media went loopy. Of course, they had no way of knowing that anyone would take a blind bit of notice and the WI itself was more than a little sniffy about the idea.

Turning it into a film, in the hope of doing a Full Monty, is the natural progression for stories as feelgood as this. Remembering what Hollywood did with Richard Harris's Stepping Out, expectations are stunted, to say the least, and yet this is a British movie, directed by Nigel Cole (Saving Grace) and written by Tim Firth (Blackball), which means that Meryl Streep is not in the cast and Randy Newman's name remains absent from the music credits.

It has to be said that locations from the last Wuthering Heights (Ralph Fiennes/Juliette Binoche) are noticeable by their presence and when the ladies do their slow motion Japanese exercises, they clamber half way up a mountain to give a better view of Wharfdale. There is the feeling of an up-market Last Of The Summer Wine, with scenes of Morris dancers at the fair, although, surprisingly, no leather on willow. Jokes about the eccentricity and plain boredom of WI meetings are rife. It seems that England is still as little as it was in 1945 and nowt changes oop here.

Before writing the film off as a sentimental wallow in middle-aged camaraderie, designed for the American market and sponsored by the Yorkshire Tourist Board, the performances bring you up short. There's no messing with the likes of Helen Mirren and Julie Walters on this showing. They are captivating, emotionally honest, funny, sad and the whole glorious everything of women on the cusp of independence, where their voices have weight and their feelings value in a world once dominated by the needs of men.

When Annie's husband (John Alderton) dies of leukaemia, the ladies from the WI gather round, but it is her best friend Chris (Mirren) who thinks up the wheeze of the calendar. Annie (Walters) goes along with it, but is always aware that it is being done in John's memory. The relationship between those in favour and those against is beautifully balanced, with Chris's teenage son (John-Paul Macleod) somewhere in the middle, embarrassed to his bones by "mum being weird" and, once the publicity hits like a storm and the press are hounding them, genuinely upset.

The film gets better and better as it goes, which is unusual, since the trend is usually a super start, a flat middle and a disappointing end. Cole is not a risk taker and Firth won't let you down. These aren't mavericks, making experimental breakthroughs. They are sensitive to language and character, avoiding, as far as possible, cheap laughs. It feels like a formula and yet is based on a real story, about real people.

Essentially and overwhelmingly British, it will appeal to almost everyone with a heart. Mirren and Walters - not forgetting the ladies and, even, God forbid, the men - are a joy to be with. If only life was like this. Perhaps it is in Yorkshire.

"You're nude in The Telegraph, dear," an old buffer says at the breakfast table. "Can you pass the bacon?"

Nowt changes.