This movie looks at the life of an illegitimate son (Charlie Lucas/Baird Wallace) of an Italian businessman, whose mother has died and is raised by an Englishwoman, Mary (Joan Plowright) in pre-WWII Mussolini Italy.
Living in an English community in Florence presided over by an ex-diplomat's wife Lady Hester (Maggie Smith), he and the other Englishwomen live a sheltered existence that they believe is guaranteed protection by Mussolini himself in a tea reception that Smith holds.
Basically a tale of how a group of women living in the increasingly Fascist Florence of 1935 depend on each other to survive in this moving drama from director Franco Zeffirelli.
Tea with Mussolini is a Film programme that first aired in 1999 and has been classified a PG certificate.
