Self
"Hudson and Halls" was a popular New Zealand cooking show featuring Peter Hudson and David Halls. It ran for around ten years during the 1970s and 80s before being cancelled. Bitter about their treatment, the pair moved to England, where their chatty, somewhat slapstick and definitely campy presentation style won a second show a cult following. While it was general knowledge that Hudson and Halls lived together, were unmarried and certainly seemed uninterested in women, they never officially confirmed the nature of their relationship in the New Zealand media while they were TV stars, though they were out in their private lives. This documentary, which includes interviews with the couple's friends and family, explores the men behind the show and their lifelong romance.
Narrator
"Smoking" and "No Smoking" are two segments of the film which are based on closely connected plays. The original plays covered eight separate stories, which have been pared down to three each for these movies. At a certain point in the story of each segment, the five female characters (all played by Sabine Azema) and the four male characters (all played by Pierre Arditi) have their lives skillfully recapped in terms of "what might have happened" if they had made or failed to make certain choices. For example, "No Smoking" focuses chiefly on the relationship between the mild-mannered Miles Coombes and his infinitely more aggressive and ambitious wife, Rowena.
