Set in the dying days of the 1960s, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical tale of two unemployed actors is a triumph of screenwriting and a brilliant showcase for then-unknown stars Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann.
By David Cairns | May 2025
Bruce Robinson’s gift for colorful language is the most striking mark of his talent. This has doubtless held him back in places where translation is required or such dexterity is not appreciated. He himself once noted that a sentence in Withnail and I (1987), “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake,” hilarious and obviously absurd to a native English speaker, could lose everything as a subtitle: something like “We’ve erroneously gone on holiday” isn’t funny at all.
“The history of its meat clung about this house like a climate.” This is a line from Robinson’s sole published novel, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, and again it illustrates his gift for the grisly but amusing turn of phrase. His signature tone is disgust.
Robinson began as an actor, eventually rising to the foothills of near stardom—François Truffaut cast him opposite Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adele H. (1975). But before that disappointment—Robinson loved the director but hated his own performance—there were, as they say, the early years of bitter struggle, and these, along with the decline of the sixties dream, are what Robinson documents in Withnail and I.
Marwood, the “I” character, is nakedly Robinson, wearing a lifelike Paul McGann costume. But Withnail, immortally played by Richard E. Grant, is Robinson, too, though he was substantially inspired by another unemployed actor friend. Marwood embodies Robinson’s paranoid aspect, while the shifty Withnail supplies him with plenty to be paranoid about.
Mainly focusing on these two characters (or one bifurcated one), the film must make a lot out of a little. It’s 1969, and two out-of-work actors, Marwood and Withnail, who share a dilapidated flat in London, take a holiday in the Lake District. Then they come back. That is the plot. Fortunately, the characters’ tendency toward exaggeration means there’s constant drama—they are, after all, actors. Marwood nervously hypes every crisis to hysterical heights, while Withnail oscillates between outrage, bravado, blind terror, and self-pity. If anything actually happened, it might be unbearable.
The script begins, more or less, with this scene description: “Dostoevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs.” A brilliant, grimly whimsical joke, but impossible to actually represent on-screen. You can’t point a camera at that joke—all you’ll see is some chairs. But it starts the reader off on a note of mordant elation that the film must find more gradually.
Before the script there was Robinson’s unpublished novel, written when the misery of unemployment had reached its awful climax and Robinson had to laugh to keep from crying. Unemployment has always been treated as something akin to a criminal offense, but it was once possible to live and do creative work on the dole, if you didn’t mind being miserable, and British culture was incredibly enriched by many of those who pulled off this tricky feat.
Everyone recognized the brilliance of Robinson’s eventual script: they just didn’t want to make it. Fortunately, David Puttnam, a former adman emerging as the savior of British cinema, commissioned Robinson to write The Killing Fields (1984)—which won three Oscars and eight BAFTAs, including Best Adapted Screenplay—and George Harrison, the Beatle turned producer, gave Robinson a chance to direct his dream project at Harrison’s company Handmade Films. The Killing Fields, Harrison once said, was exactly the kind of film he didn’t want to make—he preferred comedies. He’d fallen into cinema when Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) lost its budget at the eleventh hour, he mortgaged his house to back it, and it was such a hit that he kept on gambling. Eventually Harrison may have had cause to regret that decision—his producing partner’s fraudulence nearly bankrupted him—but British cinema benefited enormously from Handmade’s support of original filmmakers like Terry Gilliam and Neil Jordan.
Robinson’s success with Killing Fields meant he was now worth £250,000 per script. He sold Withnail and I to Handmade for a pound, so the company could feel it was cutting a profit already, and then spent much of his directing fee on shooting the scenes that Handmade had originally wanted cut. I saw the film at its 1987 Edinburgh International Film Festival premiere, where everyone laughed themselves sick. And then waited for it to actually get released. And waited.
Colin Farrell, himself part of some absolute bangers, names the one film that he views as flawless. Read more about the movie and its significance.
By Jacob Simmons
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Colin Farrell, but he’s managed to navigate a string of potential career-enders and come out the other side as a respected and sought-after actor. Long before donning a fat suit and putting on a questionable mob accent, the Irishman was delivering standout performances in critically acclaimed films. In Bruges, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The North Water, The Banshees of Inisherin—all beloved by legions of devoted fans. But has Farrell ever made a ‘perfect’ movie?
Colin Farrell
According to the actor himself, he hasn’t. That’s because, in his eyes, there’s only one ‘perfect’ movie, and he’s not in it. When speaking with Rotten Tomatoes about some of his favourite films, Farrell gave some great answers. Back to the Future, Some Like It Hot, and Lawrence of Arabia all came up, but he reserved his highest praise for Bruce Robinson’s definitive black comedy, Withnail and I.
“Oh man, is there a funnier and more poignant film that captures the anarchic irreverence of that period?” he posited. “It’s just perfect, from start to finish, in my book. Ridiculously quotable with mad, perfect performances across the board. Richard E Grant is pure genius, but everyone in the film gives amazing and hilarious and heartbreaking performances. Again, I think loneliness and isolation, and a desire to belong play big parts in this one. The story is as much a love story between the two leads as anything, with a very sad break-up of sorts taking place at the very end, with Withnail left out in the rain.”
Released in 1987, the film tells the story of Withnail (Grant), a spiteful, hard-drinking, out-of-work actor who blames all his problems on anyone but himself. He and his friend Marwood (Paul McGann), who is credited by some as the eponymous ‘I’, end up at the country estate of his eccentric uncle (Richard Griffiths), where the limits of their friendship are tested.
Much has been written about the movie, which has its fair share of famous fans, particularly about the relationship between the two central characters. Much has been over whether or not Withnail and Marwood are secretly in love with each other or if the former’s affection is unrequited by the latter. The ending scene that Farrell mentioned, in which Marwood leaves his old roommate after finding work, is often cited as confirmation of this. However, it has to be said that Grant prefers the theory that Withnail is too self-obsessed to be in love with anyone but himself.
Even after decades in the limelight and countless other excellent roles, Withnail continues to be Grant’s most enduring and celebrated character. The film is one of the most popular cult movies around (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron), with fans going out of their way to find new ways to celebrate. There’s even an accompanying drinking game; drink every time Withnail does. For the love of God, do not attempt this yourself. You will not survive.
Somewhat surprisingly, Farrell has never co-starred with Grant in anything. The two actors would be a perfect fit for each other, and Farrell would most certainly be up for collaborating with a hero of his. If any casting directors are reading this, you know what needs to be done.
Discover why Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I is a must-read for screenwriters looking to study timeless dialogue and unforgettable characters.
By Martin Keady
In a new series for Script Lab, Martin Keady, our resident cinema historian, examines The Greatest Screenplays: scripts that every screenwriter should read and learn from. He begins with Withnail and I, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical classic about a pair of unemployed actors trying to get their wits together in the countryside at the end of the 1960s.
You know a screenplay is great when you have read it over a hundred times, and it still yields new insights and delights. And lest anyone accuse me of hyperbole, that is at least the number of times that I read the screenplay for Withnail and I while researching and writing my contributions to Withnail and I: From Cult To Classic, the book about the film produced by the author and designer Toby Benjamin.
Few screenplays, if any, reward such voluminous rereading, but Withnail and I certainly does. Indeed, to paraphrase just one of its many magnificent pieces of dialogue, it contains “the finest lines available to humanity.”
Even if I were to put aside my contributions to the book, I have still written far more about Withnail and I than I have any other screenplay in more than a decade of writing for The Script Lab. Indeed, it was my numerous pieces for The Script Lab about the film that first alerted Toby Benjamin to my love for it, including my declaration in a piece written nearly 10 years ago (The Forty Greatest Screenplays Ever Written) that it was the only screenplay that could match Casablanca (1942) for sheer quotability, such that virtually every line, no matter how seemingly trivial, could be quoted and indeed was constantly quoted.
However, while Casablanca is almost universally hailed as one of the greatest screenplays ever written, if not the greatest screenplay, Withnail and I is, by comparison, relatively little known, especially in America. Consequently, I hope that this article goes some small way towards raising its profile in America and alerting US screenwriters to the existence of the greatest screenplay they have probably never read.
Withnail and I: The Backstory
Perhaps the first thing to say about the screenplay for Withnail and I is that it is just one element (albeit probably the most important element) of a perfect film. By “perfect,” I mean a film in which every single element, from the opening credits to the closing score (and encompassing everything in between), is of a uniformly outstanding quality. There is no miscast minor actor or awful backdrop-to-a-moving-car à la so many Alfred Hitchcock movies to make it lose its spell over a viewer for even a single moment.
In Withnail and I, the directing, acting, cinematography, editing, music, and everything else (set design, costume, hair, etc.) that makes up the movie is absolutely superb, such that it can be legitimately described as being perfect or as perfect as any human creation can ever be.
That is especially true of the screenplay, which in Britain has made it as legendary as any screenplay ever written. Indeed, the “backstory” to Withnail and I is itself worthy of being filmed, as it took its Robinson over a decade to complete, culminating in George Harrison reading it on a transatlantic flight and agreeing to produce it (for HandMade Films, the production company he had founded in 1978) as soon as the plane had landed.
What Makes a Great Screenplay?
As with any screenplay, the two most important elements of Withnail and I are its plotting and dialogue, both of which are exceptional, albeit for completely different reasons.
The Plot
The plot is simple, if not perfunctory. At the end of the 1960s (literally, as the action of the film takes place in the last few months of 1969), two out-of-work actors (the titular Withnail and I, who is named in the script as Marwood) emerge from their latest episode of Bacchanalian excess and decide that what they require is a break in the country, in keeping with the then-current trend among British bands, notably Traffic, to leave the city and record in more rural surroundings.
As I/Marwood puts it, with his usual mixture of plain talk and poetry: “What we need is harmony. Fresh air. Stuff like that.”
Being impoverished (even though Withnail comes from a wealthy family, albeit one he is largely estranged from), the pair resort to palling up to Withnail’s Uncle Monty, the one member of his extended family who he finds less than completely disagreeable, perhaps partly because Monty himself had “crept the boards in my youth” (i.e. acted). Monty duly lends them the key to his remote country cottage, which is more falling-down shack than a rural idyll, and the two set off from London for the Lake District, which is literally at the other end of England, for “a delightful weekend in the country.”
What ensues is anything but “delightful,” as Withnail and I/Marwood are set upon by amorous bulls, vengeful poachers, and ultimately Uncle Monty who, in the last days before homosexuality is fully legalized and generally accepted in Britain, has taken a shine to I/Marwood and consequently sets out to join him at the cottage.
This swift summation of the plot of Withnail and I was further summarised by one reviewer of the film as being, “Here. There. Here.” That line is a nod to a line in the script, namely the three-word note left by the poacher (when he is feeling less vengeful) alongside the rabbit he eventually decides to give Withnail and I: “Here, hare, here!”
In truth, there is little more to the supposed “storyline” of Withnail and I than this flitting between London and the Lake District, or between the city and the countryside. And yet Withnail and I is arguably the greatest example in cinema of the old dictum in literature that the greatest stories are those in which nothing happens but everything changes.
Nothing (or more accurately not much) actually happens in Withnail and I, yet everything changes for the titular pair, particularly I/Marwood, who gradually realizes that his supposed friend is actually utterly selfish and even prepared to risk his physical safety to get what he wants, most notably when he admits to I/Marwood that he had told Monty that I/Marwood was homosexual to gain access to his country retreat.
Ultimately, I/Marwood gains revenge by rejecting Withnail at the end of the film when he goes off to an acting job in Manchester, and Withnail is left to rot, alone, in the rat-infested flat that he now faces eviction from.
Among all its other achievements, Withnail and I is arguably the film that best demonstrates that a plot or storyline does not have to be epic, or even obviously dramatic, to be incredibly powerful and affecting.
In the story of one man coming to terms with the exploitative nature of the friendship that he has become entangled in, and finally escaping from it, Withnail and I captures the truth about so many relationships (especially so many male friendships) that have somehow continued long after they have become completely toxic.
‘Withnail and I’ (1987)
Great Dialogue
The second essential element of any great screenplay is great dialogue, and this is where Withnail and I really comes into its own.
If its plot is relatively ordinary, its dialogue is absolutely extraordinary, which is why I argued over a decade ago (an argument that I stand by today) that only Casablanca comes close to matching its seemingly infinite quotability.
The first exchange of dialogue in the film is mundane, involving I/Marwood asking (an unseen) Withnail whether he would like a cup of tea and Withnail (still unseen) replying, “No.” Yet in the café that Marwood decamps to, his first voiceover sets the tone for the flights of fancy, which are simultaneously poetic and defiantly prosaic, that he will often embark on during the rest of the film: “13 million Londoners have to cope with this, and baked beans and All-Bran and rape? And I’m sitting in this bloody shack and I can’t cope with Withnail. I must be out of my mind. I must go home at once and discuss his problems in depth.”
He does return home to Withnail but he emphatically does not “discuss his problems in depth” (problems that include a degree of self-absorption that would put Narcissus to shame). Instead, those “problems” are largely avoided until they can be avoided no more, and I/Marwood finally confronts Withnail, albeit in a decidedly non-confrontational way, at the end of the film.
In between, Robinson’s immaculate dialogue, honed over more than a decade and countless drafts of a screenplay that originally began as a novel, encompasses almost everything, or at least everything that was foremost in the minds of young people like Withnail and I/Marwood at the end of the 1960s: wealth and status, with Withnail saying of the cottage key he secures from Monty, “Free to those that can afford it. Very expensive to those that can’t”; politics, with Uncle Monty proclaiming that England and particularly those of his upper class have been “Shat on by Tories, shoveled up by Labour”; and even the Sixties themselves, with Drug Dealer Danny lamenting, “We are at the end of an age. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is nearly over. They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths. It is 91 days to the end of the decade and as Presuming Ed [his black sidekick and drug mule] here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.”
Perhaps the only universal human obsession that is not directly addressed is sex, and yet it is there throughout the film, hiding, as it were, in plain sight.
In the first instance, it is there in the character of Uncle Monty, the old and “raving homosexual” (as I/Marwood describes him) who pursues younger flesh, whether or not that younger flesh is interested in him. Ultimately it is there in the very last line of the film, in which Withnail quotes Hamlet to convey his Hamlet-like disgust with the world (including I/Marwood) that has rejected him: “Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.” The fact that this brilliantly delivered soliloquy, which proves that Withnail really can act, is delivered only to the disinterested wolves at London Zoo says it all about Withnail’s so-called “career” as an actor and, arguably, human ambition in general.
Robinson was an actor and for a time after leaving drama school a successful one at that, until he slipped into the post-drama school squalor that is alternatively celebrated and castigated in Withnail and I. Eventually, he stopped being an actor and became a writer—a great writer, as is proven by the script for Withnail and I alone. But he clearly never lost the actor’s ear for unforgettable dialogue and employed it to spectacular effect in his greatest screenplay.
See Withnail and I, and Read It for Yourself
Having seen and read Withnail and I so many times, especially while researching and writing a book about it, I can personally testify to its compelling, indeed haunting, genius.
But don’t take my word for it. If you haven’t seen or read it for yourself, do so as soon as possible, because I can virtually guarantee that you will enjoy it and be illuminated by it. And even if you have seen or read it before, see and read it again, because no other screenplay, with the possible exception of Casablanca, repays multiple viewings or readings so handsomely.
New production photos have been released from the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s production of Withnail & I.
By Stephi Wild
Birmingham Rep’s brand new adaptation of Bruce Robinson’s 1987 British tragi-comedy film, Withnail and I is directed by the double Olivier Award-winning Artistic Director of Birmingham Rep, Sean Foley and designed by Alice Power. The show is currently running at The Rep and Press Night is on 14 May at 7pm.
Robert Sheehan plays Withnail, Adonis Siddique plays Marwood and Malcolm Sinclair plays Uncle Monty. The cast is completed by Adam Young (Danny), Israel J Fredericks (Presuming Ed), Morgan Philpott (Wanker/Jake the Poacher), Matt Devitt (Farmer/Colonel & Band), Adam Sopp (Geezer/Policeman, Band & Musical Director), Sooz Kempner (Miss Blenehassitt/Policewoman & Band).
The creative team joining the writer, director and designer, Bruce Robinson, Sean Foley and Alice Power are: Jessica Hung Han Yun (Lighting Design), Ben & Max Ringham (Sound & Composition), Akhila Krishnan (Video Design), Candida Caldicott (Music Supervision), Ginny Schiller (Casting Director), Alison de Burgh(Fight Director), Sara Joyce (Associate Director), Simon Marlow (Production Manager), Jennifer Taillefer (Production Environmental Manager), Kay Wilton (Costume Supervisor), Robin Morgan (Props Supervisor) and Andriea Nelson (Wigs Supervisor).
Robert Sheehan made his acting debut in Aisling Walsh’s acclaimed feature Song For A Raggy Boy. Since then, his screen credits include: Season of the Witch, Cherrybomb, Killing Bono, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, The Road Within, The Song of Sway Lake, Anita B, The Messenger, Moonwalkers, Jet Trash, Geostorm, Bad Samaritan, Three Summers, Mute, Mortal Engines, the BAFTA winning Red Riding trilogy for Channel 43, the multi-IFTA winning Love/Hate, the BAFTA winning Misfits for E4 (for which he was BAFTA nominated), The Borrowers, Fortitude, Genius: Picasso, The Last Bus, The Umbrella Academy and the upcoming film Red Sonja. His theatre work includes The Playboy of the Western Worlddirected by John Crowley for the Old Vic, Richard III in The Wars of the Roses directed by Trevor Nunn for the Rose Theatre and Endgame directed by Danya Taymor for the Gate Theatre Dublin.
Adonis Siddique’s theatre credits include: The Crown Jewels in the West End, Saleem in East Is East (a Birmingham Rep co-production with the National Theatre); Dorian Gray in The Picture Of Dorian Gray at the Pleasance Theatre in London, Crowther in The History Boys, Jav in Mismatched, a Sky Comedy/Birmingham Rep production, Quasim in Very Special Guest Star at Soho Theatre and Kyle in Dad at SouthwarkPlayhouse. Adonis was a creative collaborator and actor in Shunt’s Party Skills For The End Of The World at The Manchester International Festival. His film & television credits include: Newark Newark, Tin Star, Tyrant, Beyond Reasonable Doubt for CNN and the feature film Me Myself and D.
Malcolm Sinclair is currently appearing at the National Theatre in Dear Octopus with Lindsay Duncan. His other many theatre credits include The Inquiry at Chichester Festival Theatre, My Fair Lady in the West End, The Light in the Piazza internationally and at the Royal Festival Hall, An Enemy of the People at Nottingham Playhouse, This House at Chichester Festival Theatre and at the Garrick Theatre, The Doctor’s Dilemma, The Habit of Art, The Power of Yes and House/Garden, History Boys and Racing Demon for the National Theatre, Ivanov at the Donmar Warehouse and Richard III, Uncle Vanya and The Comedy of Errors for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His many TV credits include Andor in A Star Wars Story for Disney +, Midsomer Murders, Virtuoso Silk, Henry V, The Hollow Crown, Foyle’s War, Hustle, Judge John Deed, A Touch of Frost and the US mini-series, Scarlett. His many films include: Drowning; The Man Who Knew Infinity, Survivor, A Belfast story, The Young Victoria, Casino Royale, V for Vendetta, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Young Poisoner’s Handbook, God On The Rocks, Now That It’s Morning and Success Is The Best Revenge.
Written and adapted for the stage by Bruce Robinson himself, the writer and director of the original film, the show will bring to life some of the most iconic comic characters ever created. The film, based on Robinson’s own unpublished novel, was produced by Handmade Films and starred Richard E Grant, Paul McGann and Richard Griffiths.
Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan