The Evans and the Lindens are two archetypal American families who uncork the wine and socialise after the kids have gone to bed.

Edith and Jack only have eyes for each other. Hank and Terry only need to exchange a glance... It's just a shame that Edith's married to Hank and Terry to Jack.

Jack (Ruffalo) and Edith (Watts) have already embarked on a full-blooded affair with trysts grabbed when time allows on a blanket in the local woods.

Terry (Dern) suspects something is going on and quizzes the darkly evasive Jack (after she's had a gin) but in the morning buries her suspicions in a mountain of domesticity.

Meanwhile, self-absorbed writer Hank (Six Feet Under's Krause) offers homely support to Edith and their daughter... but not monogamy.

Unfolding from four alternating viewpoints, this refuses to judge the paradoxical actions of loving parents determined to save marriages they secretly long to escape.

Essentially a four-hander, the plot cleverly plays each character off against the other to the extent that Hank actually becomes an unwitting alibi to his wife's infidelity.

Out of the four, Dern is the most likeable character and we suffer with her as she grabs at any emotional straw in a desperate bid to keep the family together.

Conversely, her errant husband Jack - disturbingly nailed by Ruffalo - is the least likeable; any tenderness at home is directed past his wife to the kids.

Delicately played and painfully observed, you get the impression that Relate would be calling up the Samaritans if this lot pitched up in the office.

Somehow, you don't see the Evans and the Lindens playing Twister in front of an open fire on Boxing Day afternoon ever again.

A tale of adultery where no-one acts like an adult.

Tim Evans