Three single career women, in a small English village, meet regularly over gin and tonic, fags and chocolate biscuits to make light of their depressing love lives. They are (supposedly) the wrong side of forty and not having much luck with the lads.

Three-times-divorced GP, Molly (Anna Chancellor on fantastically barbed form), has a knack for picking the most inappropriate partners; local police chief, Janine (Imelda Staunton), "the PC PC" as Molly calls her, runs for her life when sex rears its head, while Kate (Andie MacDowell), the headmistress of the village senior school, has been receiving interest from the outdoorsy, but older vicar Gerald (Ian Paterson).

Then Kate meets an ex-pupil and 25-year-old hunk, Jed Crush (Kenny Doughty) at the church one day. The attraction is animal. They make out in the graveyard.

He's the organist at the village church (cue for a string of puns about "playing large organs"), she's a headmistress, which means she has appearances to keep.

As it becomes clear that the affair is not going to run out of steam, Molly and Janine, out of concern that their friend's "infatuation" will end in tears, set about trying to break-up the relationship. What has been a gentle romp through the English countryside takes a darker turn.

Whatever happens in this comic drama - and it would spoil it to give anymore anyway - you can be sure that it will always gravitate back to a soft-centred, feel-good denouement.

The story doesn't bear up well on closer inspection. Let's face it, Andie MacDowell must be one of the most glamorous women supposed to be this side of forty on the planet. At one point, it is suggested that she could be as old as fifty. But then an older actress would have changed the tone of the story altogether. It would have been braver, not to mention more believable, but we don't want our escapism tainted by reality, do we?

Kenny Doughty, with his pin-up good looks, is a good match for MacDowell here. Together they look beautiful together, acting not being part of the job description. At the trickier moments, director John McKay simply whacks on a pleasant ditty and we watch the two romping around the countryside. The English landscape looks its greenest and most pleasant: a lush, leafy backdrop for the summer madness.

McKay also uses the clumsy narrative device of the flashback in attempt to generate a sense of depth in the relationship. Is he covering for his leads' shortcomings in the acting department? Probably.

Anna Chancellor and Imelda Staunton are in a different class, making the most of the occasional sections of sparkling repartee in John McKay's script. In the scenes with the three women together, MacDowell shines too.

Also, on the positive side, the plot does offer a welcome twist, adding some darkness to the light, although in the end this is a slightly doctored version of a familiar feel-good formula.