There are remarkable similarities between Gabriel and Me and Billy Elliot, which is not surprising perhaps because this darker screenplay was also written by Billy Elliot screenwriter Lee Hall.

In both films, the protagonist is a young working class boy who finds salvation from his grim, Northern situation through escape. In Billy Elliot it is in ballet dancing. Here Jimmy Spud is visited by the angel Gabriel, who to the boy's great excitement, offers him the chance to become an angel himself.

As in Billy Elliot, the boy's relationship with his violent father (excellent performance by Iain Glenn) is at the centre of the tragi-drama. Jimmy's father, a brusk, unemployed shipyard worker, is not well. He has a cough like death and his temper is on a dangerously short fuse. He also doesn't like the fact that his son doesn't like to fight and shows no interest in Newcastle United. When his son refuses to act like a "normal" lad he is quick to burst into fits of homophobic rage that turn into fits of coughing.

Feeling shunned by his dad, Jimmy finds solace with his grandfather's pigeons and the deserted dockyards where his streetwise angel (Billy Connolly) finds him. The Archangel is a sophisticated creation, with a response to everything, even the question of whether God exists. While Gabriel appears to be a fictitious invention of Jimmy's imagination, Prasad always dangles the possiblity that his angel is real and this film will metamorphose into more than a quirky grim-up-North drama.

The dark tone is brought into some relief by a vein of gentle and ironic humour, particularly in the relationship between Jimmy and his grandfather (played with working class dignity by David Bradley) and the streetwise angel (Jimmy: "Can I have a harp?" Gabriel: "I'm afraid harps are reserved for cherubs only?"). However, having created the relationship between angel and boy, the film is unsure what to do with it. The angel appears to do very little.

The tensions between the family, couped up between the four walls of their small home, are well-studied and Prasad draws convincing performances from all his cast.

But the film, like dad's lingering lung cancer, feels drawn out.

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