Eccentric, yet wealthy, English novelist Emily Delahunty (Maggie Smith) is travelling by train from Umbria to Milan when a terrorist bomb explodes in her carriage. In a kindly gesture, she offers her fellow passengers residence at her house to recover from the ordeal. Amidst the luscious, olive green beauty of the peaceful Italian countryside this unlikely group - Mrs D, her Irish odd-job man (Timothy Spall), a retired British general (Ronnie Barker), a German student and a traumatized young American girl, called Aimee (Emily Clarke), orphaned by the blast - find solace in one another and seem to form an odd family together.

As the young girl begins to recover under Emily's care, it emerges that she has an uncle (Chris Cooper) and conflict occurs once he arrives from America to take her back home. Given he's a cold, uptight man, Mrs D naturally has differing ideas of what is best and if he expects to just turn up and whisk her off to the other side of the world, he's got one or two lessons to learn about Italian charm.

My House In Umbria, directed by Richard Loncraine and based on the novella by William Trevor, is a meandering affair, made originally for HBO in the States and, in many ways, it has a TV feel about it. Since much of the time is taken up with the recuperation of folk in a delightfully idyllic setting some of it seems inanely predictable and leaves you wondering why it received a cinema release at all.

Smith does her best to justify that calculated risk, giving a decent performance, as the quick-witted Mrs Delahunty, and newcomer Clarke is quite captivating as Aimee.