The Moss sisters-“my lilies,” as their father calls them-live in working-class Liverpool right after World War I. Alongside their sorrowful, overbearing father and war-tormented brother, these young women struggle through poverty, passions, and disappointments-sustained by the fortifying power of family.
Tough, sexy, funny and heartbreaking, Lillies details the lives of Iris, May and Ruby Moss – Catholic sisters coming of age in a dockland terraced house. Familial love sustains them, and their fortunes are bound to those of their brother and their father. Set in the years immediately following the First World War, Lilies pulls no punches in its storytelling. It depicts a sensual, vivid and sometimes savage universe – where life is lived on a knife-edge of poverty, fuelled by various kinds of love. Dadda, the family’s charismatic and mercurial father married very young, is now widowed, and his struggle to nurture his unruly children proves both moving and comic.
Starring Brian McCardie, Catherine Tyldesley, Kerrie Hayes, Leanne Rowe, Scot Williams, Stephen Moyer, Daniel Rigby, Jennifer Hennessy, Iain McKee, Ebe.
Not rated.