 Synopsis
A nation decided; a family divided.
It's two years since the Scottish independence referendum and fervent nationalist Arlene, who was too young by two weeks to vote in it is 18 today and claiming her personal freedom from a family who voted to remain. And she's leaving not just her home and her tight-knit family, but Scotland itself, to go to university in Sweden, and never come home until her country's brave enough to rule itself.
"I told you I'd go," she tells her stricken father, Adam, a man who wants nothing more than to hold his family together, "and you told me to keep my promises." Romantic nonsense, the hard-headed businessman tells her - "You don't have to keep daft promises, and you're not going, and that's that." Who cares if she goes, thinks sister Shona, and we'd all be better off without her. For Shona has troubles of her own - a baby and a dope of a husband who's left her carrying him by getting himself sent to prison; who wants freedom if you're broke and lonely? We have to let her make her own choices, thinks mother Margaret, or we risk losing her forever.
Meanwhile, forces Adam can't control are closing in on his business, but he can't let go and lose the security he needs to underpin his family.
'Better Together' is a darkly comic drama that puts family ties to the test and asks how the Finlay family survives the growing up of two daughters, and how they will face the world outside their own front room. Set against the background of a national referendum and economic austerity, it’s also about the struggle to stand on our own feet in a complicated world where nothing we do and no choice we make is without consequence for those closest to us. |
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