Sunday 10th October The Last Bus

A heart-warming tale of Tom (Timothy Spall), a pensioner whose wife, Mary (Phyllis Logan), has just passed away, who travels from Britain's most Northerly point, John O'Groats, to his original home town at its most Southerly point, Land's End, using his free bus pass. He carries with him his wife's ashes in a small suitcase, travelling the length of the country to take her back home. Along the way, his adventures are recorded by the people he meets and helps, and by the end of his trip he has unwittingly become a social media celebrity. This modestly quirky drama about a widower's adventures on the local bus network opens in flashback in 1952, when an opaque tragedy sends a couple from the West Country to the far point of John O'Groats, where, decades later, we meet them in their quiet dotage. A foreshadowed event sets creaky, muttering Timothy Spall on a cross- Britain pilgrimage to Lands End utilising the free bus network that he can access with his travel pass. With his map of the UK, precious brown suitcase and habit of nodding off, he learns to rely on a string of kind-hearted strangers, from hen- night revellers to a Ukrainian wedding. The movie's momentum is arduously slow, thanks to the arbitrary timetable, and changes of location are signalled more by bus company livery than by scenery, but it's neatly told by Brookside lifer Joe Ainsworth and briskly patted into feel-good shape by director Gilles MacKinnon (Small Faces). Spall makes believable if not always generous company, and you'll find yourself cheering him on to his destiny.