Based on a memoir of English writer Laurie Lee & featuring narration by Lee himself, this made-for-television adaptation begins in wartime 1918 with Lees family moving to the Gloucestershire countryside. Juliet Stevenson shines as the matriarch of this large blended family, a compassionate & distracted woman who pines for the broods missing father. The movie takes Lee from a young boy sleeping in his mothers bed through his girl-obsessed adolescence, fondly dealing with an assortment of relatives, schoolmates & villagers along the way. Lee doesnt actually have cider with girlfriend Rosie until a few minutes before the 82-minute movie ends, but in the meantime Charles Beeson, directing from an adaptation by John Mortimer, has offered up a gentle homage to long-passed era.