Homes for the People.

Veteran filmmaker Lewis Gilbert (Alfie, Educating Rita) made his directorial debut with this quirky documentary, promoting the contribution of the British steel industry during the nation's housing crisis in the wake of WWII. A pre-'Carry On' Charles Hawtrey appears as a writer assigned to investigate the strange new phenomenon of the 'prefab' - steel-framed prefabricated homes designed to take advantage of wartime advances in mass production.  At the end of WWII, the need to replace housing that had been damaged or destroyed in air raids was so acute that prefabricated houses - known as 'prefabs' - were investigated as a short-term alternative. The post-war housing minister, Nye Bevan, dismissed them as "rabbit hutches" but, curiously, the prefab came to be one of the most popular forms of council housing because of its size, its garden and the privacy it afforded. Directed by the prolific British director Lewis Gilbert ('Alfie', 'Educating Rita') early in his career, 'The Ten Year Plan' stars 'Carry On' actor Charles Hawtrey as a louche young writer sent to report on a range of prefabs, discovering with some surprise that many of them look like "real" houses.