Suspend disbelief and dive in. The circumstances which have given rise to the strange world portrayed are never explained, but this is a short drama, not a novel, and it's the situation itself that matters most. And the two characters who find themselves meeting because of it.
A young man (Sean Connor) waits on a broken park bench, uncertain, impatient. An older man (Billy Mack) fleetingly appears, and disappears. Eventually they meet, and go through the motions prescribed by the government pamphlet and app that brought these strangers together. They've been told they have to make contact, to try and bond, but how can they do that when their shared experiences are so different? When expressing emotion is not what men have been brought up to do?
This dark comedy explores how men might try to make real friendships in a world without women, one man pining for the life he knew, the other for the one he missed out on. Each one wary, making hard work of questions and answers. It's a big subject for fifty minutes, but Alison Carr's script still manages to deliver an emotional punch amid the laughs and the lows, and touches on the problems of male friendships. Two strong performances as well, notably from Mack who develops his taciturn character into a creature of hurt and yearning. Definitely worth a watch.
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