Bobbie's Girl

Made for Showtime in 2002, Bobbie’s Girl is a small character drama. Rachel Ward and Bernadette Peters star as a loving couple who run a pub together in a small seaside town outside of Dublin, along with Jonathon Silverman as her gay brother.

Directed by Jeremy Kagan from Samuel Bernstein’s script, the story opens with Peters retrieving Ward’s suddenly orphaned 10 year old nephew from the very English boarding school where he’d been stashed. His parents’ death occured before the movie began, which violated my preference for “show, don’t tell,” but not terribly. The nephew is played very well by Thomas Sangster, who shortly thereafter essayed a very different role as the stepson of Liam Neeson in Love, Actually.

Ward comes from a family with rampant emotional issues, as does she, and so she barely knows who the boy is and has a difficult time making room for him in her life. Peters, conversely, does her usual ditsy, gregarious thing, thrilled to finally have a child in the house. Complicating the transition is a serious illness that puts Ward in the hospital. We get the expected happy ending but it’s a nice trip.

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