Wakefield Express was commissioned to celebrate the newspaper's fiftieth anniversary. It tells something of the history and the current operation of the paper and devotes itself to the subjects which occupy the reporters on the "Express" and its associated newspapers: the communal life of a group of towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire. But there is nothing of the impartiality of the "general survey" about the film's approach. Its perceptive, humanist outlook brings enough concern to the communal activities to view them, in turn, with affection and irony, exasperation and respect.