In the Bleak Midwinter (released in the US as A Midwinter's Tale) is a 1995 British romantic comedy film written and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Many of the roles in the film were written for specific actors. This was the first film directed by Branagh in which he did not appear.

Plot

Joe Harper, a depressed and down-on-his-luck actor, asks his agent Margaretta D'Arcy to lend him money to put on a Christmastime production of Shakespeare's Hamlet in his hometown of Hope, Derbyshire. Wanting the rendition to be "free and experimental", Joe holds auditions that attract a variety of performers, most of whom Margaretta thinks are mad. In the end, Joe casts six actors: the well-meaning Nina Raymond; the long-suffering and cynical Henry Wakefield; the flamboyant homosexual Terry DuBois; the vain Tom Newman; alcoholic-in-denial Carnforth Greville; and former child actor Vernon Spatch. Joe casts himself as Hamlet.