THIS is a fairly grim and depressing look at psychiatric care facilities of the Seventies. Action takes place over a day in a mental institution, from the time when Alan the overworked day nurse arrives in darkness, to the point he leaves. The inmates are each allowed their moment or moments to manifest their diverse obsessions, whether they be fitness, music, chess, or time, and it is time that drags, both for them and for the viewer, exposed to the pent up tension of private obsessions leading public lives.

The main point seems to be that this is no solution, that medication and lies are all that is left to these people, and that, despite this, they are essentially no different from those outside (even Alan has his own obsessions). Communal living does not imply communal thinking: as a demonstration of the isolation which society imposes on most of its members, "Funny Farm" is both poignant and fatalistic. Once again, Clarke is imposing reality on the viewer. No effects, no mitigating lighting or cutting, no soundtrack; just over-revealing close-ups and over-intimate investigations.