Set in 1916 Yorkshire, The Choral follows a doctor who inherits a village choir stripped bare by the Great War and tries to keep it singing. Nicholas Hytner directs a story that frames the war as senseless destruction, with music as a quiet act of resistance rather than patriotism. The Progressive label follows from several converging choices: Black characters are woven into the rural English community without period-accurate friction, the choirmaster carries a quietly gay identity including grief over a German lover, and the film treats class and faith tensions with skeptical distance. None of these elements are loud or polemical, but together they reflect a worldview that modern progressive audiences will recognize as their own.