Now this is actually something of a surprise here, as today we segue into a bit of British drama that isn’t sent to me from the Warner Brothers / BBC coalition. No, this particular drama (with occasional bouts of comedy, comes by way of the folks out at Lions Gate, who sent a copy of The Bad Mother’s Handbook to review.

The Bad Mother’s Handbook follows three mothers, all in the same family. The elder Nan, who’s steadily losing her mind in her advanced age, the slightly young version in Karen, who’s steadily losing her mind under the pressures of the world, and the most recent mother, Charlotte, who’s losing her mind under the discovery that she’s pregnant at seventeen and surrounded by a host of issues.

The drama train here will come off the rails almost after the first minute, with easily more drama–more outright melodrama more often than not–in that same minute than is offered in some entire movies. It’s downright frightening, and more than a little depressing, how much drama they’ve got wedged into this behemoth, as each new scene brings something terrible along with it.

You’ve got to stop and consider that this is a seventy minute movie, but due to the intense amount of drama involved here, it has a way of screwing with your time sense. It’s not a happy movie, The Bad Mother’s Handbook, but if you’re the kind of person that can’t get enough of the drama, then you’re totally going to be all over this.

It’s not very coherent, though–they’re not working on one central overarching plot here so much as they are doing a series of interconnected scenes all vaguely related to each other. And some will likely come in for Robert Pattinson, hero of the Twilight series, but you’ll be terribly disappointed in that he’s not in this very much, and when he does show up, he’s less like a person and more like a muttering cipher who’s been tasked to be shy and quiet, with occasional bouts of being pedantic.

Before you take on The Bad Mother’s Handbook, you have to ask yourself how much you’re into drama. If it’s anything less than fanatical chances are you’ll be either lost or bored to tears. If it is fanatical, then chances are you’ll be taking it apart and comparing it to everything else you’ve ever seen, and probably enjoying it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this disjointed drama fest a six out of ten for being a fantastic example of something most people won’t even want to see anyway. But for true drama buffs, it should be a sweet slice of joy.