Table 12

There has been a vast improvement in short films in recent years (the reasons why would probably make a feature).

It used to be all third-rate Samuel Beckett wannabes and petrified student actors giving art films a bad name. Now turn on Film Four, and they've all become as slick as features, often co-opting big names.

For some reason, however, the general public will not go out of their way to view or even tape a short film, even in this supposedly short-attention-span society. Whether this series of crisply edited and well-cast ten-minute dramas, each set at a restaurant table, will change all this remains to be seen.

The first in a batch of ten features Daniela Nardini as a music journalist and Paul Nicholls as a pop star, her interview subject.

You get the feeling it's not interesting enough to spin into a full-length drama, but it works quite nicely as a snippet.

From scanning the synopses of the other stories, they're all very middle-class and safe (very 2001), but it's a good sign that the short-film market is being embraced by the mainstream.

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