Freeview film of the day: Sliding Doors

Sliding Doors ★★★
11.25pm-1.00am BBC1

This is a Richard Curtis-style offering that would have benefited from a little of that Curtis fairy dust. It offers up the ambivalent prospect of California’s Gwyneth Paltrow flexing her posh English accent in a London-set “What if?” story with two separate courses, the outcomes hinging on whether or not Paltrow’s sacked PR exec catches a particular Tube train. In one version, she walks in on boyfriend John Lynch while he’s playing away, and dumps him in time to fall for John Hannah. In the other, well, I won’t spoil it for you. Although neatly written and unobtrusively directed by Peter Howitt, it does suffer from an uneven tone and, ultimately, there not being much of a difference between the two conclusions. But at least Paltrow does have different hair to help discern between the stories.