Manche Hunde beissen

How many times have you reached the end of a drama and wished it hadn't turned out quite the way it did? If only your hand had been on the steering wheel and you could have stopped the hero from drowning, or called the fire brigade in time to stop the grand mansion burning down. Some Dogs Bite (BBC3) is a drama that offers that option. You get the chance to go online and twist the outcome by allowing its central character, the taciturn H, to explore variations on his fate. It opens up a roundabout of possibilities, the turning you take deciding the fate of H and his two brothers, teenager Casey and baby Severino. I'm wary of interactive drama. Too often it's simply used as a cop-out by writers and directors who can't quite make up their minds, like a dance track where endless remixes obscure the quality of the original. But Some Dogs Bite sidesteps those concerns, driven by a genuine desire to open up the options to characters who, to put it mildly, have had a rough ride. H, Casey and Severino are orphans, half-brothers born to the same mother and three different fathers. Their mother is dead, the fathers are absent and they face life on the run when Casey snatches Severino from care. On these lost souls director Marc Munden and writer Lin Coghlan hang a haunting portrait of fractured lives on the fringes of society that neither romanticises nor judges its subject. Boasting impressive performances from Aaron Taylor as the struggling H and Thomas Sangster as the other-worldly Casey, Some Dogs Bite does bite. It makes you want to explore the machinations of social services as you get inescapably involved with the different lives the boys could have had, as opposed to the fate doled out by the drama on screen. Some Dogs Bite worked fine as a stand-alone film, a silent and occasionally shocking road movie about boys on a collision course with a dead end. But getting the chance to intervene in their fate, to not just turn a blind eye, meant this moving story's teeth marks lingered in the flesh long after the credits rolled.

Aaron Taylor (as 'H') puts in a stunning performance of such sincerity that allows for sufficient suspension of disbelief upon which to hang the plot line. One of the key attributes of this drama is that it eschews the standard formula for the 'buddy' movie where by one can interchange any number of characters , locations and other elements from dozens of productions without noticing much difference. In Some Dogs Bite the viewer is compelled focus on each scene through a mixture of curiosity as to the development of the protagonists whist simultaneously kept on edge by the true to life unpredictability of the narrative. In conclusion some dogs bite is at once both brutally stark portrayal of life for the modernly dispossessed and a truly moving depiction of human compassion.

In a world of broken homes and absent parents, children are forced to create their own security as best they can. Some Dogs Bite is a hard- edged, stunningly photographed and brilliantly performed road movie aimed at younger viewers, in which three brothers - an 18-year-old, a 14-year- old and a baby - travel across the UK in pursuit of some sort of sanctuary, encountering equally lost souls along the way. "No one has ever taken care of us," says one, "so now we must take care of each other." Directed by Marc Munden (The Mark of Cain) and filmed by Wojciech Szepel (Tess of the D'Urbervilles), it boasts stunning performances from Aaron Taylor, Thomas Brodie Sangster and a baby who deserves a Bafta. Viewers unhappy with this tough version of events can interact online and manipulate the outcome.

From VARIETY REVIEWS "When the mother of three boys (all from different fathers) dies, her middle son, pubescent Casey (up-and-coming young thesp Thomas Brodie Sangster), kidnaps his younger brother, 10-month-old Severino (played by Cory Smith, Kian Smith and Lewis Ryan Dickinson), from care. Casey then compels his older sib, H (Aaron Taylor), to help them run away to Scotland to find Casey's long-gone dad. Budding criminal H would rather not go but has little choice, as Casey has stolen some money from him and sent it ahead to a post office box in Inverness.

En route, they have various scrapes and hook up with two similarly adrift, emotionally neglected girls, mouthy Venetia (Michelle Asante, especially good) and more stable Seema (Mandeep Dhillon), and romantic feelings blossom between H and Venetia. The kids find shelter in an abandoned rural cottage H heard about from soldier Lenny (Aymen Hamdouchi), who's terribly excited about becoming a dad for the first time, therefore spelling disaster for him" I loved this film and was moved to tears by the storyline. It could have been more hard hitting but that would have meant that many of the young audience who its aimed at wouldn't have been able to watch it. Beautifully acted especially by Michelle Asante and Thomas Sangster. Marc Munden is a wonderful director also. I hope it gets worldwide release