Back in the Swinging Sixties some bright spark came up with the idea of a motel where the drama centred around the private lives of the staff and guests.

There was dear, departed Noele Gordon as the draconian boss, David "scratch me and you'll get a splinter" Hunter as her supersmooth manager and dimwitted Benny oddjobbing around the motel set in Birmingham's stockbroker belt (there is one).

Thirty years on, director Gary Yates takes the basic premise of the Crossroads Motel and applies it to the Niagara, a shabby tourist pit where the residents and staff are suffering their own personal crises.

There's a rarely sober janitor (Ferguson), a pregnant waitress being tempted into porn by sleazeball Kevin Pollak and a middle-class couple whose marriage is teetering on the brink.

Basing the drama on the cult Canadian stage hit Suburban Motel, Yates strives for a black comic edge but blunts the drama thanks to the staginess of the source material.

It tries too hard - various minor characters suffer bleakly amusing deaths: one was eaten by a bear, another was "yelled to death" and Ferguson's wife toppled over the falls on their honeymoon.

There's also the question of pace. It doesn't have any. Every scene, featuring routine "look at me - aren't I crazy?" characters, lurches into the next with a wearying regularity.

At one stage Anna Friel's recovering druggie, desperate to reclaim her fostered child, declares "I'm in hell". Well, for ninety minutes, so was I.

Tim Evans