A disappointing film all round, surprising from an otherwise talented director ('Bridget Jones’s Diary') and a top-line cast … the problem being that it is a poorly written effort that quickly sinks into melodrama.

Fire and brimstone aplenty as out-of-touch but morally strict priest (macfayden) returns to his Irish home town to find the citizens have fallen badly from grace, what with the drinking and the getting-with-child.

How we love our dear Miss Jane Austen … all those wonderful characters, all those balls and sly manipulation, all that romance.