Goofs

The double yellow (meaning no parking at any time) lines seen being painted on the road near the beginning of the film disappear later on.

Prior to being loaded into the ambulance, she is seen sitting in a wheelchair with a cane in each hand. In the following shot, from the rear, both canes are held in the left hand and she is reaching in her right pocket for something. The next shot, from the front, shows her just placing the canes into her left hand and beginning to reach for her right pocket.

In the opening scene the windshield was cracked and had a blood stain. This cracked area and blood stain were much smaller than they were for the rest of the film.

In one of the van-painting scenes, one shot seems to depict paint being slopped across the window. This was creative license to show her frivolous application of paint from another point of view. That is why, in the next shot, taken from outside the van, there is no paint on the window.

When Miss Shepherd is painting the van yellow in the street it is a Bedford style van. When she gets bought a replacement van it is the Commer style, but when she paints it yellow on the drive it is back to the original Bedford style van.

Margaret/Mary is shown parking her new Commer van in the drive of Alan Bennett's house and she pulls up on the handbrake in the middle of the van, where a handbrake would normally be. In fact Commer vans had their handbrake to the right of the driver's seat between the seat and the door - not between the two front seats.

There are a couple of historical mistakes which the filmmakers perhaps missed, and which show the hazard of filming in today's environment. In one of the early street scenes, circa 1974, Miss Shepherd is seen walking away from a crossroads. The traffic signals shown there are a modern design, not introduced until 1997. In another scene where she is seen with Alan Bennett near the gates of the convent, the block of flats in the background have modern double-glazing. In the 1970s, this would either have been single-glazed with wood frames or light aluminium.

There is a cable TV box on the outside of Bennett's House, there was no cable TV - certainly not in 1973.