Targeted mainly towards a more mature, feminine audience, director Richard Loncraine’s UK comedy-drama is machine-tooled to fit an age-old entertainment format. Which is essentially to say that it’s a fluffed-up mixture of laughs, romance, life lessons, tears, a trip to a romantic European city (Rome) enlivened by bursts of dance and song. 

Imelda Staunton stars as the wealthy Sandra, married to a knighted senior police constable. At his retirement party, she finds he’s been having an affair with one of her friends, and so she moves out and crashes at her sister Bif’s (Celia Imrie). The siblings haven’t spoken in 10 years, but the friendless Sandra has nowhere else to go. 

The stage is thus set for a variation on the classic odd couple set-up, based around
not only clashing personalities but – mandatory for British stories – class difference. Bif is an unpretentious old hippy, happily living on a grim council estate and...