Glen Berry

In Beautiful Thing (1996), Glen Berry's Jamie Gangel struggles to believe that someone might like him. Berry leaves that uncertainty untidy, and his scenes with Scott Neal's Steven Pearce move at the hesitant pace the boys can manage. We were moved by their awkwardness together, because being wanted seems almost more than either knows how to accept. The acting is raw in a way that suits the characters, and a more assured performance could easily have made the romance less persuasive.

That performance remains the clear place to begin with Berry, whose career offered little scope to see how this approach might develop. He came to that lead through small television roles, including London Bridge (1995), and later took minor parts in work such as From Hell (2001). His retirement from acting in 2003 leaves no long succession of leading roles against which to test the promise of Jamie. We can value what he achieves here without inventing the career that might have followed.

The limitation in Beautiful Thing is that Jonathan Harvey's writing gives the boys less to do as people than it gives them as a couple. Their emerging sexuality is clear; the ordinary details that might distinguish them outside the romance are thinner. Berry and Neal's rapport keeps us interested, but it cannot supply everything the script has left out. Don Fairservice's editing also leaves some good exchanges feeling loosely connected, so the actors have to sustain our attention when the story does not move them forward convincingly.

Berry's own description of Jamie was blunt: “Jamie is totally opposite to what I am, in everything.” That is worth remembering when his lack of polish looks so unforced. He makes a sensitive adolescent believable without tidying away the discomfort, and Neal gives him a partner who is equally unsure. Start with Beautiful Thing for the tenderness between them, with the caveat that the performances offer more than the writing.