Michael Horden plays the unlucky academic in a fine, subtle style. Most of the direction and dialogue was improvised between Miller and Horden as they filmed. Professor Parkin goes on holiday to a small seaside hotel. He is a fussy, awkward, absent-minded bachelor from Cambridge. The film cleverly emphasises that he is distanced from his surroundings and fellow men with several techniques.
Dialogue is kept to a minimum.
Everyone seems to converse with a stream of mutters, mumbles and snatches of words as if the viewer is listening to the characters from another room. Miller often films the Professor from a distance or claustrophobiacly close up rather than television's traditional two or three person framing. The Professor hardly ever converses normally with anyone. If he isn't muttering or harumphing he tends to repeat a word or phrase that has been said to him, rolling it over and over as if deciphering a code. It could be a defence mechanism to stop him having to relate to other people or it could just be a habit brought on by years of scholastic solitude.