Brenda Blethyn’s Acclaimed Drama Dragonfly Is Now Streaming Free in the UK

Brenda Blethyn’s acclaimed post-Vera drama Dragonfly has found a new streaming home, giving UK audiences the chance to watch the film for free on ITVX.

Written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams, the unsettling British drama pairs Blethyn with Andrea Riseborough in a story about loneliness, care and the assumptions people make about one another. Jason Watkins also stars. The film received its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, where Blethyn and Riseborough shared the Best Performance award in the International Narrative Feature category.

After arriving in cinemas in November and becoming available digitally in February, Dragonfly is now available to stream on ITVX. The platform describes it as a story of “friendship, resentment and retaliation.”

A friendship that takes a disturbing turn

Blethyn stars as Elsie, an elderly woman whose inadequate care has left her increasingly vulnerable. Her 35-year-old neighbour Colleen, played by Riseborough, becomes concerned about how she is being treated and volunteers to help her without payment.

An unexpected friendship begins to develop between the two women. Colleen provides companionship and practical support, and the pair gradually become confidantes despite the differences between them.

But the relationship becomes increasingly complicated when Elsie’s son grows suspicious of Colleen and questions what she really wants from his mother.

Those suspicions, shaped in part by his existing prejudices, begin to alter the dynamic between the characters. What initially appears to be an everyday story about two lonely neighbours eventually moves into far darker territory.

Tribeca’s synopsis similarly describes Colleen stepping in after becoming disgusted by the care Elsie is receiving, before doubts surrounding her intentions trigger a chain of events capable of changing both women’s lives.

Brenda Blethyn was drawn to the film’s exploration of judgment

For Blethyn, one of the most interesting elements of Williams’s screenplay was the way it encourages viewers to form opinions about its characters — and then reconsider them.

Speaking to Radio Times, she explained that the script makes it difficult not to judge the different people involved before forcing audiences to question those conclusions.

Blethyn also felt that each character could be viewed with a degree of sympathy, while at the same time there were reasons to blame each of them for what unfolds. That ambiguity became particularly important as an apparently ordinary situation moved towards a shocking conclusion.

The project also represented a significant change of pace for Blethyn following her departure from Vera. She had spent 14 years playing DCI Vera Stanhope before deciding to leave the long-running ITV detective series, but Dragonfly arrived almost immediately afterwards.

Blethyn later revealed that she had not intended to take another project so quickly. However, with filming in Yorkshire imminent and the opportunity to work with Williams and Riseborough, she found the screenplay difficult to turn down.

Blethyn and Riseborough lead an acclaimed pairing

While Dragonfly received a mixed overall critical response following its release, its two central performances attracted significant attention.

Radio Times awarded the film four stars, describing it as a bleak but absorbing examination of loneliness and social care in modern Britain. Its review particularly highlighted Blethyn, suggesting the actress had been given one of her strongest film roles since Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies.

Riseborough was also praised for another transformative performance, continuing a career in which she has repeatedly disappeared into dramatically different characters.

That acclaim was reflected at Tribeca in June 2025. The festival jury jointly awarded Blethyn and Riseborough Best Performance in an International Narrative Feature, praising the commitment both actresses brought to characters capable of inspiring empathy as well as unease.

The film itself was presented at Tribeca as an “unpredictable and eerie” exploration of elder care and isolation, using elements of drama and thriller storytelling to examine the need for human connection alongside people’s capacity for both kindness and cruelty.

Where to watch Dragonfly

Dragonfly is now streaming in the UK on ITVX.

The film runs approximately 94 minutes and stars Brenda Blethyn, Andrea Riseborough and Jason Watkins, with Paul Andrew Williams serving as both writer and director.