The film does not have a simple plot, but rather cuts between the interweaving stories of several characters, as they prepare for the coming months away at sea. The action centres around the bars and clubs of the Union Street district of Plymouth. One major event that affects all the characters is the hospitalisation and eventual death of Daniel (Gary Oldman) after a violent assault by a nightclub bouncer.
Gregg got the idea for the film from his own experiences as a student at Plymouth Art College.[7] It was largely shot on location, including interior scenes in two Union Street pubs, The Phoenix and The Two Trees[5].
The film was commissioned by Channel 4, before the channel had started broadcasting and was aired in the first week of the new channel[5] in early November 1982, close to Remembrance Sunday.[7]
Unusually for the time, the film had been given a cinema preview in June 1982 at the Screen on the Hill cinema in Hampstead.[8] This was a purely opportunistic enterprise, taking advantage of the prominent role that the Royal Navy had played in the Falklands War to gain publicity for the film (and the upcoming launch of Channel 4), but it turned out to be a significant event in the relationship between cinema and television in the UK. In Independent Television in Britain (Volume 6, 2003),[6] Paul Bonner and Lesley Aston note that:
With historical perspective this can be seen as a pivotal point in the relationship between cinema and television [...] In the following two years Justin Dukes' formidable negotiating skills were brought to bear on the restrictive practice by the Cinema Exhibitors' Association of preventing any film for cinema showing being shown on television for three years after its release [...] Dukes argued that... if the films could not be shown on television when the channel which had paid for all or part of their cost... then they would not get made. He was successful in getting the embargo lifted for films costing less than £1.25 million (later this was to rise to £2 million). It was a major step forward for the channel and, as it was to turn out, for the cinema industry also.
