Allelujah [Blu-ray] [2023] [Region Free]

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Allelujah, which is based on Bennett's 2018 play of the same name, tells the story of a geriatric ward in a small Yorkshire hospital which is threatened with closure. When a small geriatric hospital in Northern England is threatened with closure, the staff and patients rally together to try and save it. The ostensible purpose and meaning of the film is of course to proclaim the value of the NHS, although you might argue that this faith is slightly deflected or undermined by the big narrative reveal – inspired by well-attested real life cases.

Judi Dench, Jennifer Saunders, Bally Gill, Russell Tovey and more to star in Alan Bennett's Allelujah film". It’s not completely out of left field and is telegraphed subtly but consistently throughout the piece, but it re-contextualises the entire film in a way that will either make or break it for audiences.There might be a glimmer of hope with this task as the government consultant tasked with the final evaluation - "Colin" (Russell Tovey) has his estranged father " Joe" (David Bradley) in that self same facility. Elsewhere on the ward, Judi Dench plays Mary, a retired librarian with a passion for cataloguing rather than books, but a keen interest in marginalia: the readers’ revealing scribbles at the side of the page. As is the way with reviewing new releases whose plots hang on a major revelation, we can’t really talk about Allelujah's hellacious Hail Mary of a finale here.

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But this watchable, undemanding drama rolls along capably, enlivened by unmistakably Bennettian gags and drolleries which come along every minute or so. By the film’s end, Dr Valentine is face-masked up in the middle of the pandemic, delivering a bone-rattling monologue about the state of the NHS after the most WTF third act twist we’ve seen since Jamie Dornan confessed a sincere belief that he was a honeybee in Wild Mountain Thyme. Humble, unglamorous geriatric care is however about vulnerable patients who are heading just one way, and their treatment crucially involves kindness and compassion which have nothing to do with the bottom line. One of the residents, Mary Moss, is discouraged from being interviewed on-camera by the television crew, but Valentine gives her an iPad and encourages her to document her day-to-day experiences.