Tippling novelist Emily Delahunty (Smith) has lived quite a full life. To say the least.

Born the unwanted daughter of a circus wall-of-death motorcycle husband and wife team, she was sold for a mere £20 to step-parents.

In this unwelcoming home, she was the teenage object of furtive gropings in a darkened cinema by her lecherous "dad".

Fleeing his attentions, she travelled the world with a faithless lothario only to find herself dumped in Marrakech...and forced to go on the game to pay her bills.

Discovering her talents as a romantic novelist - a sort of alcohol-fuelled Barbara Cartland - she ended up in a palladian villa in the Umbrian hills of Italy.

After all that, the last thing she'd want to happen is a bomb to go off in the compartment of the train she's travelling to Milan in. Well. Er.

Recovering in hospital, she discovers her fellow survivors include crusty old general (Barker), an idealistic young German (Furmann) and eight-year-old orphan Aimee (Clarke).

Emily invites them to convalesce at her creeper-clad Umbrian villa under the watchful eye of her Irish butler-come-bottle-washer Quinty (Spall).

As they heal from their wounds - both physical and mental - all's well...until the arrival of Aimee's dry-as-dust uncle Thomas (Cooper) to take her back to America.

Immaculately played but pitched unashamedly at the blue rinse brigade, Emily and Thomas are the only two characters who stray further than stereotype.

She's an intriguing old lush, lent a depth the character probably doesn't deserve by Smith, while he's a dessicated academic more at home in the world of insects than adults.

Never remotely believable - Smith's artfully crumbling pile looks like something out of Conde Naste Traveller - this slips down like a half-decent Chianti...without the remotest risk of a hangover.

Tim Evans