County Kilburn

A week in the life of a London Irish pub has the designer bonhomie and saturated sentiment of a television sitcom. The plot is minimal, the characters are dysfunctional and the incidents are innocuous.

Mickey (Ciaran Mcmenamin), the 25-year-old barman, is about to jack it all in and go home to Ireland, where his brother is a minor TV celeb. He can't make up his mind about what to do with his girlfriend, or much else for that matter, which fits effortlessly into the ambience at The Wagon & Horses.

Regulars enjoy the banter and interrupt Mickey's moaning with more of their own. They are full of blarney, of course, and hide psychological scars beneath conventional camouflage - the sexist show-off who still lives with mother, the disgruntled old-timer who has seen it all before, the clever contemporary of Mickey's who is terrified of failure, the middle-aged bore who is obsessed with weather forecasts, the silver-tongued car salesman whose confidence hides a multitude of fears, the geriatric lovers, the silly priest and the girl Mickey worshipped at school but never so much as asked for a dance.

The clubby atmosphere does not extend to strangers, which includes you, as writer/director Elliot Hegarty attempts to emulate the familiarity of a Cheers-style elitism. Knowing these people helps to understand why alcohol is such a boon to the lost and the lonely. It makes them forget how sad they look and why the Irish are the most prodigious whiners in the world. So they are.