Is Anybody There? (12A)

EDWARD (Bill Milner, one of the boys from Rambow) is a strange youngster who’s fascinated by capturing the spirit of people after they’ve died.

He lives in the right place to achieve that ambition – his parents (Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey) run a nursing home where the family lives and the residents come to die.

The arrival of an initiallyreluctant new resident, a magician named Clarence (Michael Caine) – or The Amazing Clarence to give him his stage name – is the catalyst for several family crises.

The other oldies are a veritable who’s who of acting OAPs including Leslie Phillips, Sylvia Syms and, in what must be one of her final appearances, Elizabeth Spriggs.

But he does form an unlikely, if not entirely easy, friendship with Edward, who sees in Clarence the chance to study an old person at close quarters. He might even learn a few magic tricks along the way. Screenwriter Peter Harness was obviously scarred for life growing up with his parents running an old folks’ home but here hits the right note of sentiment and humour, aided by a star turn from Caine as the increasingly befuddled Clarence and Bill Milner as the inquisitive young Edward.