To say there are two sides to Mike Leigh’s cinema is almost literally true. When a Leigh film drops on your doormat you find a seaside-postcard-style picture on the front – broad outlines, bold colours, characters from defined social classes – while the back features anything from a suicide note (Vera Drake) to complex screeds of tragicomic psychological insight (Naked, All or Nothing).

Happy-Go-Lucky is unusual because there seems to be nothing on the back of this exuberant human comedy, at first glance, but “Wish you were here”. “Here” means London, swinging merrily 40 years after the 1960s and energised by a trio of women friends led by fun-loving Poppy (Sally Hawkins). Poppy insists that there is more to life than just getting through it. Even if you live in low-rent Camden you can crack jokes, teach schoolchildren to make bird-heads out of brown paper shopping bags, fall for a suave beanpole of a social worker (Samuel Roukin) and even – your good turn for the decade – put a little love in the heart of an uptight driving instructor (Eddie Marsan).