The Choral

Alan Bennett’s first original screenplay in twenty years: a poignant, bittersweet comedy about a Yorkshire village’s local choral society during the First World War.

You don’t have to believe it. I always took the Matthew Passion with a pinch of salt.

Ramsden, Yorkshire, 1916. The ambitious local Choral Society is depleted as men volunteer for the front and plans for their St Matthew Passion by German composer J. S. Bach are scuppered by patriotic fervour. Dr Guthrie, the mysterious, exacting new Chorus Master, finds a replacement in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius and swells the choir’s numbers with teenage boys and girls. Together they discover the urgency of desire and the joy of singing as the new boys come to terms with their imminent conscription, and friendships and summer trysts are suffused with a melancholy sense of all that might soon be lost.

The screenplay will be published alongside the film’s AUSTRALIAN release (on 1st January 2026) and includes a preface by the author and an introduction from Nicholas Hytner.