The punchline is - the casting agency contacted me because they knew i was a nurse.

They dressed me as a C. P. N. (Community Psychiatric Nurse),or Social Worker. I waa actually working as a C. P. N. At the time.

I didn't recognize the portrayal of community and hospital mental health services as shown in the film.

However it was apparently supposed to be set in 80's or something. My big moment was walking into the big Psychiatric hospital, down a long corridor while Ms. Maxwell Martin was coming from the other end of the corridor. I couldn't help but let on to her as she approached. This was because, everyone around these units etc, is very friendly and positive in my experience. The atmosphere has to be positive and recovery oriented or it would be unbearable for both service users and staff.

Maybe Ms. Martin thought i was trying to 'corpse' her. Anyway they only ran through it once and i was consigned to the cutting room floor.

Us extras spent the whole day just sat around and my impression was of an unhappy set and crew with an overbearing and unpopular Director.

Firstly, I did enjoy this film, it had strong characters and some interesting scenes. However, I've worked in a mental hospital and I can say that where I worked was nothing like that! The patients were supervised a lot more and given much more attention than Poppy , N and the others were given.

I suppose it could be argued that it was being portrayed as how the hospital 'felt' to the patients rather than reality, but this is not shown really in the film. It could also be looked at in a Kafka-esquire nightmarish slant on reality, but again , I think that would be reading too much into it. I know it is a film about madness, but it is obvious in it what is real and what is not.

Poppy is the character in the film that is supposedly sane, who as been sent to the hospital by accident (like One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest),and this was another thing that bugged me. How on earth can you do so badly filing in a job application form that you end up in a mental hospital?? This was the reason given in the film and I half expected it to turn out that Poppy WAS mad after all, as it seems such a daft reason!

I think the only reason Poppy was in hospital was because the Plot demanded that she was. The modern day NHS simply does not operate like this.

And again and again I got a little bit ticked off by the rail road plot that sent this poor woman down a pretty predictable decline into actual madness, until it reached its rather disappointing ending.

Still, I don't want to put anyone off as I did actually enjoy this film, but more for the good performances than the plot, which turns the NHS into some sort of ghastly monolithic institution very far away from reality.

I saw the advert for this one-off drama, and I was mainly attracted by the two female stars, the programme itself was pretty good too. Basically N (Bleak House's BAFTA winning Anna Maxwell Martin) has been a patient at north London's Dorothy Fish day hospital for 13 years, and she has never thought of leaving. Then she meets glamorous new patient Poppy Shakespeare (28 Days Later and Pirates of the Caribbean star Naomie Harris),an ad agency executive convinced she's not mad and that she has been forced to be there. N is the only person that will listen to her and possibly believe she's right. As they hang out together more, other patients start to doubt believe there is some sort of conspiracy at the hospital as well, when one of them discovers the mirrors are two way, and that the staff know Poppy is sane, but have been examining her for some reason. As you'd expect, there's a point where N and Poppy are parted when Poppy overdoses on some drugs, and N can't eat or sleep till she gets back. But when Poppy does get back, wanting help with her daughter who her ex-husband is planning to take away from her, N doesn't answer the door, and Poppy killed herself. N by the way was found (possibly because of the discovery) cured and allowed to go home, but she manages to get to the truth before being returned to either her old life or the new one outside. Also starring Tessa Peake-Jones as Rhona and Orrianne Laughton as Safra. Good!