Five sympathetic characters blunder and blag their way through demanding periods of their lives. Loneliness, guilt and looming penury drive each of them into a quirky melee of sometimes weird but always enticing decision-making and action-taking. Quality and assessment person Francine (fiftysomething) is menopause-hormonal and unlucky in love. Student Olivia is a beautiful, chaste, livewire teenager with a faith in odd strategies and is bound to do well. Film lecturer Robin and sweet Polish Katrin are intense, intertwined and solemn. Their coupledom has a Tolstoyan dynamic that is fun, erotic and in truth pretty daft. And honest, solid Ed sorts out pauper’s funerals for the council. These are good people who have no skills for making consistent emotional or practical sense. This is pure romance that resounds with the delightful clang of clumsy truth.
