Half Broken Things

Penelope Wilton is note-perfect as Jean, a lonely, seemingly harmless housesitter who builds an elaborate fantasy world when she collides with two other lost souls in this dramatisation of Morag Joss's subtle, absorbing novel. Jean is well-meaning, but after a chance meeting with thief Michael (Daniel Mays) and pregnant girlfriend Steph (Sinead Matthews, see below), she embarks on a desperate course when the three are bound by tragedy. It's an excellent, slow-building thriller that fills the viewer with trepidation at each inexorable step, as the three spend an idyllic summer at Jean's "borrowed" home (a gorgeous manor house). Though highly improbable (there are plenty of plot holes, if you want to look for them), Half Broken Things works extremely well, thanks to the three central performances and a prickly feeling that all will not turn out well.