Beloved children's author Roald Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) and his actress wife Patricia Neal (Keeley Hawes) are struck by family tragedy in To Olivia.
Maybe the reason children's stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were so distinctive was the Viking blood flowing through Roald Dahl's otherwise-English veins.
His parents were affluent Norwegians who emigrated to Wales, and while the former WWII fighter pilot couldn't have been more British, Dahl always felt like a bit of an outsider.
Quite unlike the man who portrays him in the film To Olivia - Hugh Bonneville - who has built his reputation playing thoroughly decent chaps like Downton Abbey's Lord Grantham.
The one similarity that gregarious Grantham shares with the prickly Dahl is that they both married high-profile Americans.
Before Dahl achieved fame and fortune as one of the greatest children's authors ever, he was slightly over-shadowed by his wife, American film star Patricia Neil, played here by Keeley Hawes.
Patricia obviously adored her husband, to the extent of slowing down her career to be a mother to their (then) three children.
In this film, their son Theo barely gets a look in with the emphasis going on daughters Olivia - the favourite - and Tessa - the outsider.
When tragedy strikes and Olivia dies, the family collapses.
Patricia, aka Pat, attempts to keep the family going but Roald locks himself away with a bottle of booze every night, trying to finish - or at least start - a book that seems beyond him.
To Olivia tells the story of how a dilettante, semi-successful children's author became - well, Roald Dahl and how the death of Olivia may have contributed to that.
But then the film starts to turn into the story of Patricia Neal, who made her name playing opposite some challenging co-stars - including John Wayne, Ronald Reagan and Gary Cooper (with whom she had an unhappy affair for years).
At the height of the misery Neal shared with Dahl came an offer of work with the biggest star of the time, Paul Newman.
You don't have to be a student of film structure to be wondering at this stage "Whose story is this anyway?"
It may be the story of Roald Dahl, with the punchline to be him having a gigantic and famous hit…
But it's also the story of Pat Neal and how she turned a bit part in Paul Newman's 1963 Western Hud into an acting career with awards and critical acclaim.
In many ways, To Olivia is also the story of Dahl and Neal's younger daughter Tessa, who finally came out from under the shadow of her beloved sister at the age of ten - no mean feat.
In other words, the film shouldn't work at all but it does because of the performances.
Despite being far too nice for the role, Hugh Bonneville brings Roald Dahl home nicely, as does the peerless Keeley Hawes as Patricia. And almost as good is Sam Heughan in a short bit as - I'd have said - the inimitable Paul Newman.
Heughan absolutely nails Newman, which may be a tribute to him, to Newman and of course to writer-director John Hay.
I was slightly surprised at how Hay concludes To Olivia. In real life, the tale turned considerably darker.
But maybe that's the point of a Roald Dahl story - he can call it however he chooses. This story chooses a happy ending.
