Choice: Film

Kolya, The McCarthy, Scarborough (01723 370541)

Suddenly having a child dumped on you is something of which Hollywood is inordinately fond. It's a cue for cuteness: grouchy turns to heartwarming and everywhere you look there's an outburst of personal growth. Inner children are detected beneath emotionally frost-bitten exteriors only to be nurtured and pampered to the point whereby us cynics want to smother them. It's refreshing, then, to see something along these lines with altogether more grit, but then this is set in Prague and not middle-America, and it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Not that this should put you off. Terrific performances and genuinely moving.