Falling review: This tale of love in cloisters has an impeccable pedigree but ends up a real curate's egg

Written by Jack Thorne, whose prolific output includes His Dark Materials, the new Sam Mendes Beatles films and last year's mega-hit Adolescence, it also has an top-notch cast.

Keeley Hawes plays Sister Anna, who entered a convent 26 years ago and lives a contented life – apparently – growing vegetables to donate to food banks and helping novice nuns through the troublesome first years.

We first see her pottering about her vegetable patch, bees a-buzzing, birds a-tweeting, the wind gently blowing through the raspberry canes and making the nasturtium blooms nod.

Into this Garden of Eden comes temptation in the form of Paapa Essiedu as Father David Hicks, a priest serving an inner-city Bristol parish and keen to bring some of the more devout young members of his congregation to the convent, to experience a life “of conviction”.

Just a momentary touch of the hands in the convent kitchen, however, throws both into a romantic turmoil which leads to severe consequences for both.

Both Essiedu and Hawes are great, and the cast is fleshed out with a whole raft of brilliant actors, from Rakie Ayola as a parishioner who takes Anna in, to Jason Watkins – suitably pompous as the local bishop – and Father David's deaf sister (Sophie Stone) who convincingly builds a sibling relationship through sign language.

There are some good moments, such as when Anna and Muriel (Ayola) discuss getting Anna some new clothes and the nun has a panic attack in the changing rooms, confronted with so many mirrors.

“I've forgotten what I looked like,” she says.

Meanwhile, Father David administers the last rites to one of his parishioners, after which his sister tells him, “you're good at death”.

But the great cast and the good moments are let down by the central premise, which would see Sister Anna and Father David thrown away years of good work, of faith, of a vocation, after a mere touch of the hands.

Anna's rejection of her life of faith, in particular, seems less than convincing and more the stuff of teenage romance, the sudden heady rush of first love.

She is someone with a certain worldly, down-to-earthness, who helps her young apprentice nun Bimpe (Shayde Sinclair) with her confused feelings.

“It's not about a boy,” Bimpe tells her. “It's my friend Susie. Is that okay?”

“With me, yes,” comes Anna's considered reply. “With God? I would hope so. With you...?”

All something you would imagine a woman who had lived in a convent for almost three decades a bit of a pause for thought.

While her proclamation of love for Father Hicks, delivered in Hawes' cut-glass RP accent and with a stutter here and a stumble there, immediately brought to mind Hugh Grant babbling on about the Partridge Family in front of a dumb-struck Andie Macdowell.

Meanwhile, after being rebuffed by Father Hicks, Anna emphasises her true feelings in Judy Blume language.

“I'm some caged bird who saw a means of escape,” she says. “I saw what you felt. And I felt it too. I didn't imagine it.”

It's unusual to see a drama which doesn't feature troubled police officers, and it's even more unusual to see two characters in or approaching middle age wrestling with the impact of love.

But Falling is like the curate's egg – good in parts. You just can't help feeling that, with it's pedigree, it could have been so much better.