When you've been cast as the icon in the most successful film franchise the world has ever seen, it's quite difficult to shake the character off.

James Bond, as successfully reinvented by Brosnan, has been plastered across billboards from Stornoway to Singapore and, rumour has it, has even been seen in Wales.

The Irish actor adeptly suspended the licence to kill in The Thomas Crown Affair, but he was essentially playing the same sort of suave and sophisticated role.

Here, he can't get further away from 007, but such is the staying power of the legendary profile that he never fills the shoes of dirt-poor, cuckolded dad Desmond Doyle.

You half expect his pint of stout to erupt into a heat-seeking missile or his flatbed truck to morph into an Aston Martin Vanquish.

Abandoned by his wife (now, that would never happen to Bond), Doyle does his best to raise his three kids in 1950s Ireland.

However, when his mother-in-law informs the authorities, the Catholic church and the Irish courts unite to put the little mites in orphanages.

Think The Magdalene Sisters if Disney had got hold of it, and you've some idea of the mawkish malarkey as daughter Evelyn (Sophie Vavasseur) gets short shrift from a nun from hell.

Vowing to reunite the family, Doyle tours the pubs with his dad belting out Irish tunes with such gusto a place on Stars in their Eyes is surely just a matter of time.

Told by sympathetic lawyer Michael (Stephen Rea) that he is up against a "cosy conspiracy" between Church and state, Doyle takes the fight to the courts.

His ramshackle legal team, which boasts the usual drunk-out-of-retirement brief (Bates), plans to do the unthinkable - challenge a law before the Irish Supreme Court.

Although based on a true story, this is the Ireland dreamt up by damp-eyed Americans who dye the river green on St Patrick's Day.

In other words, it has all the gritty authenticity of a leprachaun sighting. Guinness was never meant to be shaken or stirred.

Tim Evans