Project Detail

Day Release

Synopsis

When the stress of running a large business in an increasingly competitive world became too much to bear, Jeff Baker's wife and associates conspire to have him sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983. Now, six months later, he is entitled to an informal Mental Health Review Tribunal to determine his fitness to return to society.





Initially, the panel recommend a conditional discharge that amounts to little more than granting him 'Day Release', under the foolish assumption that nothing could go wrong in one day.





But the intervening months have wreaked havoc on both his private and business life, and in his attempt to rebuild them, he is told that his parents are dead, his kids have flown the nest to join obscure cults, his wife has run off with his business partner whose embezzling tendencies have resulted in the total collapse of their company which is now being controlled by their former accountant, under his deceptive guise as The Official Receiver.





As Jeff accumulates the evidence that is to prove that both he and his wife have been misled, manipulated, cheated and lied to, he acquires a string of witnesses who all, without exception, suffer from one form of phobia or another. In effect, he comes to realise what the medical profession has known all along, that everyone in the world is neurotic, it's just that some of these neuroses, such as an obsession with money, have become generally approved of by society.

Details

Year
1998
Type of project
Features
Running time
92 mins
Format
Digi Beta
Director
Charlie Gauvain
Producer
Martin Darvill, Sir Nicholas Bonsor
Director of Photography
Andy Murray
Principal cast
Simon Green, Manouk van der Meulen, Elaine Hallam, Sarah Withe, Fiona Christie and Garth Bardsley
Executive Screen Writer
Tim Purcell

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

Bolt-On Media Ltd Liscombe Park Soulbury Leighton Buzzard Bedfordshire LU7 0JL Tel: 01296 689080 Fax: 01296 682445

Sales Company

Bolt-On Media Ltd (as Production Company) (UK & Rest of the World) Gully Multi-Media (Australia, New Zealand and Asia) Unit 2 92 Julia Flynn Avenue Isaacs, ACT 2607 Australia Tel: 61 6 286 1957 Fax: 61 6 286 8139 E Mail: gully@spirit.net.au

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A small, cute, orange blob character is sat in a simple flat pink environment, looking at the viewer. Above them is a text box, floating Poob

Director: AJ Jefferies

Year: 2026

POOB is ready to LEARN and have FUN! An exploration into control, detachment and agency in an abusive relationship.

Two young girls sit accross from each other at a table Backwoods

Director: Aminah Alhamdu

Year: 2026

Two estranged friends miss the last bus home after a rave and are forced to stick together to make it home before dawn.

A dog in a crudely made fox costume is sat being fed by a yellow marigold glove on the end of a wooden pole. A Skulk in London

Director: Polina Chizhova, James Stephen Wright

Year: 2018

The work “A Skulk in London” explores the human projections onto animal life from a satirical perspective. Its aim is research the life of urban foxes amid the Anthropocene environment of central London and the mythologies surrounding them to highlight the human tendency of understanding and perpetually interpreting the natural world limited by the point of view of “man”. The main character is a city man who becomes fascinated with finding nature in the city and is following urban foxes to fulfil his dream of wilderness. The character lives in a world of fantasy and does not consider the perspective and agency of urban wildlife. His obsession is so blinding and absorbing that he doesn’t realise that the fox he finds is, in fact, a dog in a costume.