Cold Comfort Farm is a funny and clever English satire directed by John Schlesinger and based on Stella Gibbons' 1932 novel.

Kate Beckinsale plays Flora, a smart and poised London woman who, after being orphaned in her 20s, accepts an invitation to live with some rural relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex. Most of them are daft. Flora, a control freak with charm, sets out to change her depressed cousin (Eileen Atkins); her husband (Ian McKellen) who would rather be a hell-and-damnation preacher than a farmer; their son (Rufus Sewell), a narcissist who loves the movies; and Ada Doom (Sheila Burrell), the tyrannical head of the household who never leaves her room because she once "saw something nasty in the woodshed."

The ever efficient Flora also plays matchmaker and even manages to find a suitable lover herself. This hilarious satire nicely skewers the dark romantic novels of rural England and shows how a control freak can find happiness orchestrating the lives of others.