The Lovers puts a big question to its audience, and how you respond is likely to determine whether you find this spiky romcom wonkily charming or amoral and grating. A mildly famous man meets a distinctly not famous woman, but don’t mistake this for Starstruck, because its tone is far more abrasive. It tries to find out whether it is possible for an audience to root for two people to have an affair, even if one of them has a perfectly nice-seeming girlfriend.
Johnny Flynn is Seamus O’Hannigan, a radio presenter making the move into TV when he is given his own Sunday Politics-esque show. The catch is that it will be filmed in Belfast, rather than in London, where he lives, because the studio is under pressure to produce more regional programming. His mother is Irish, so it will be a chance for him to “get back in touch with me roots,” he jokes, in a terrible accent. While in Belfast, through a series of very contrived events, he meets Janet (Roisin Gallagher), who works at a supermarket. Janet’s husband has just left her and she is so miserable that she plans to kill herself that very night. Naturally, fate, and Seamus, intervene, and this odd couple begin to fall for each other.
