Laurie Lee's own voice, recorded in 1988, was used for the narration, which gave the film extra impact, and the scriptwriter's daughter Emily Mortimer was cast as the mad Miss Flynn. Juliet Stevenson was cast to play the pivotal character of Lee's mother, Annie, and she read the late Mrs Lee's letters in preparation for the role. Several other Cotswold villages and the town of Stroud were also used as locations, as was Clevedon in Somerset, while Lee's final home in Slad, Rose Cottage, became the film location for the Slad village pub. In its place another village, Sapperton, near Cirencester, was used for filming most of the outdoor scenes, with the main street gravelled to overcome the out-of-character 1990s road surface. Lee's home village of Slad was found to have changed too much since the 1920s to be used as the main film location, with conservatories added to cottages and other modern alterations. Charles Beeson was appointed as Director. Soon after Lee's death in 1997, Mortimer spoke at a memorial service for Lee and then turned his friend's autobiographical book Cider with Rosie into a screenplay, persuading Carlton Television to produce it. John Mortimer and Laurie Lee had been friends from the 1950s on. Videohound says of the film 'Laurie's childhood consists of school, church, village festivals, eccentric relations and neighbors, and the usual childhood tribulations'.

The main action of the film ends before Lee sets off on his early travels, which are dealt with in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. One theme is Lee's awakening sexuality, as he grows older, and the title refers to his first flirtation, with a village girl called Rosie. As part of that breaking-down process, Lee's father abandons his family, leaving his wife to bring up eight children.

It follows the ending of the traditional English village way of life, with the coming of motor cars and electricity, the death of the local squire, and the influence of the church ebbing away. The film is about the poet Laurie Lee's childhood and youth, between the ages of four and twenty-one, growing up in the Cotswold village of Slad, Gloucestershire, in the years following the First World War. It was broadcast in the US as the second episode of Series 28 of Masterpiece Theatre and was later issued as an ITV Studios DVD. The film was made by Carlton Television for ITV and was first broadcast in Britain on 27 December 1998.

1998 British TV series or program Cider with RosieĬider with Rosie is a British television film of 1998 directed by Charles Beeson, with a screenplay by John Mortimer, starring Juliet Stevenson, based on the 1959 book of the same name by Laurie Lee.

A cider with rosie