A natural landscape for Leigh's offbeat and bleakly humorous worldview. Ken Barnes called it "bleakly philosophical" and "apocalyptic". Seurat paints their prospects bleakly, cloaked as they are in shadow and suspicion of sin. Otherwise Engaged is a bleakly comic play by English playwright Simon Gray. The storyline ended bleakly with Lorraine dying before Mandy could make amends with her mother. "We leave behind dreaming," she tells him bleakly. Death, the Devil, and the landscape are all rendered in a bleakly northern manner. His message is bleakly fundamentalist; about being ready for the imminent end of the world.