William Hartnell

One of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark of “kitchen-sink realism” follows the self-defeating professional and romantic pursuits of a miner turned rugby player eking out an existence in drab Yorkshire. With an astonishing, raging performance by a young Richard Harris, an equally blistering turn by fellow Oscar nominee Rachel Roberts as the widow with whom he lodges, and electrifying direction by Lindsay Anderson, in his feature-film debut following years of documentary work, This Sporting Life remains a dramatic powerhouse.

A clerical error leads to the appointment of a left-leaning small-town priest to a rich village, where he immediately horrifies his snobby parishioners by appointing a dustman and a black man as vicar's wardens and throwing open the vicarage to the sprawling, disreputable Smith family, who have just been evicted from their caravan site. He converts the dowager aristocrat to works of absurd charity but he soon has the town and much of the country in uproar.

One of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark of "kitchen-sink realism" follows the self-defeating professional and romantic pursuits of a miner turned rugby player eking out an existence in drab Yorkshire.

One of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark of "kitchen-sink realism" follows the self-defeating professional and romantic pursuits of a miner turned rugby player eking out an existence in drab Yorkshire.