Critical Response
Channel 4's reviewer said: "Abigail's Party still ranks as the most painful hundred minutes in British comedy-drama."
In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, Abigail's Party was placed 11th. It also appeared in a Radio Times poll to find the top 40 greatest TV shows on British television, published in August 2003.
Several critics (notably Tom Paulin) have responded more negatively, noting that Abigail's Party appears to represent a middle-class schadenfreude, with the only true middle class character, Sue, looking on at the antics of the couples with disdain. Nonetheless Leigh has responded that none of this prevents the characters (Beverly and Laurence in particular) reflecting the real-life behaviour of aspiring couples in mid 1970s suburbia. Other aspects of the narrative which appear to conform to this stereotype have become 'correct practice' but the naive storing of a red wine, a beaujolais, in the refrigerator ironically is the correct practice for beaujolais nouveau.
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