Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubborn determination for the costly outfit gets him into trouble as he desperately turns to more questionable measures to raise the money in Middleton.

Thanks to beloved character actor Ricky Tomlinson, Raining Stones has some of the funniest comic relief scenes in Ken Loach’s many dramas about working-class people desperately fighting systems that allow them no breathing room. A morally thorny final act makes this one of his richest films.