An early BBC work, Hard Labour continues the understated, downbeat style of Bleak Moments in what may be Leigh's most poignant portrait, that of a middle-aged working class woman whose life is a never-ending grind of housework; either for her grumbling, thankless husband or the equally thankless matron for whom she cleans. Leigh claims to have drawn directly from his childhood in creating the characters, and the film was shot around his native Salford.