Stretching fact to the point of utter disbelief

HOW fortunate for the BBC that real life events - recent reports of embryo mix-ups at a fertility clinic - gave this two-parter a topicality that they couldn't have foreseen when making it. How unfortunate, on the other hand, that they couldn't produce anything better than a drama that was always predictable and most of the time downright unbelievable.

The Ella of the title is a blonde five-year-old girl who can sometimes be a bit of a handful for her single parent mother Madeleine (Juliet Aubrey), an English

literature lecturer who conceived her daughter through IVF.

Gina (Michelle Collins), who is married and wealthy, was going through fertility treatment at the same time. But, five years on, she and businessman husband

George (Sean Gallagher) are still desperately trying for a child.

When she spots a news item about allegations of a mix-up at the very clinic where she's been receiving treatment, she turns up demanding to know if someone has been implanted with her eggs.

It just so happens that the receptionist leaves her desk, that Gina just so happens to find a confidential file, and that file just so happens to fall open at the page stating that her embryo may have been given mistakenly to Madeleine. While the viewer is still reeling with incredulity at this coincidence, Gina goes stomping off to demand her daughter be handed over to her.

Madeleine, an otherwise sensible and intelligent woman, backs out of taking a DNA test to prove whose baby Ella is. Instead she decides to play private

detective to discover the skeletons in George's cupboard, to give her the ammunition to fight any claim for her child.

An unexpected meeting - as believable as Gina finding the files - ends up with Madeleine sleeping with George. And then going back for more later. As her

friend points out: "You're supposed to get the dirt, not be the dirt."

Meanwhile Gina, as we all knew she would, has become obsessed with Ella. You can tell this this because she forgets to do the shopping. Pushing a trolley about

Tesco takes second place to stalking Ella. She follows her home, stakes out the house and - stop me if you've

already guessed - kidnaps the poor girl and takes her off to France.

This does nothing to endear her to Madeleine (who's having lunch with Gina's husband at the time) or show her fitness to be a mother as she manages to lose Ella on a beach in France. "But she can't swim," screams Madeleine on hearing the news, although she might have screamed "But she can't speak French" for all I cared by this point.

To give them their due, the cast seemed to think they were involved in something much better than it was.

Michelle Collins was, well, Michelle Collins looking anxious in pink, while Juliet Aubrey is far too good an actress to be bothered about nonsense like this.