23 Walks

The sadness that courses through this uneasy and deliberate courtship won’t be to every taste. But for the brave, for those experienced enough to know about “baggage” and that no one gets out of here alive, this tale of finding a surprise connection in the twilight years, overcoming shrinking horizons and the burden of grief, disappointment and melancholy will resonate.

With the best will in the world, this is thin stuff. The dialogue is written in the awkward, stilted style of a radio play – first-person pronouns dropped in a fashion that never really happens in everyday speech – and the confrontations are too often clunkily contrived.

There are also some well-observed touches, especially concerning the fleeting friendships dog-walkers make with each other and the diversity of London’s population.

Maybe not quite enough to warm a sceptic’s heart, but certainly a pleasant enough outing for your nan.

Time and again, the film corrals their characters into situations it lacks the emotional delicacy to get them through unscathed – not least a weirdly frenzied sex scene which begins with so much off-screen grunting and puffing I assumed it must be the set-up to a joke, and the camera was about to pan across to the pair shifting furniture.

23 Walks is romance of the gentlest kind. Steadman and Johns are likeable but the writing doesn’t deliver characters that compel and convince. But for dog lovers, it’s pooch porn.