Written by Stacey Gregg, and directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, Ballywalter is a likeable, grounded drama with key comments on mental health and self-worth, where strong performances rule the roost to make it a bittersweet and thoughtful affair.

An excellent Seána Kerslake plays Eileen, a twenty-something Northern Irish girl who’s clearly struggling with everything from finding a job, to drinking too much right through to connections with the people in and around her jobs. While one is working in a café that she doesn’t care about, she’s also taking on work as an unlicensed Taxi driver to make any money she can. While this profession means she meets a lot of different people, she’s not really interested in relating to them, as she just wants the rest to pay people back or go to the pub.

Early on we meet Shane, played by Patrick Kielty in his first dramatic role, who’s living in Ballywalter – a small town on the edge of the Irish Sea, about an hour and a bit out of Belfast. What I did like about the early meetings of Shane and Eileen is the gradual reveal of their own lives and the growth of their disjointed relationship – as friends. The first pick up of Shane is barely a moment, as if he’s just another character in her day-to-day, but over time we learn a little more about them both, where they’ve been, what’s gone wrong and how troubled they are when we jump into their lives.

Both Kerslake and Kielty build a natural chemistry, with the former’s Eileen detached from the world around her, and Kielty’s Shane a dishevelled and melancholic man, haunted by some things he’s done recently and a personal shame that comes with it. While they’re both severed in different ways from the life around them, they gradually connect in a way to hopefully bring them back to the hope of everyday life, and to something to live for.

To help this blossoming friendship, Shane has enrolled in stand-up comedy class and his journey is to find the confidence and belief to get up and out there, with the addition of those in this group as well – and yes, Eileen will need to play a part in this development. Eileen will also need some strong hits of consciousness, ones that begin to root down. But, you know, for both of these characters it’ll only happen if they want it to and – like we all know – a genuine human bond is a must for this to grow.

It’s directed and shot with a proper earthy/city vibe, nothing too shiny or over-edited, as cinematographer Federico Cesca takes us into the streets of Belfast in a rain and darker times, fully reflecting our lead characters and the reality of how you feel when struggling with your mental health with grief or depression – and with the latter context I understood that first-hand feeling, where even on the brightest day – it can feel like the opposite.

My only confusion lay in why it’s called Ballywalter, beyond Shane’s location, as it’s clearly in Belfast and so I assumed it’d all be in the small town. However, we could use its distance as a metaphor, alongside the vastness of the wide-open sea ahead and that feeling of isolation, with it only being counteracted once they both return to the city – and the comfort they find in the groups or family they’ve reached out to.

I loved the line ‘You’ve got the right to fail, here.’ – that’s an key thing to remember for both our leads, through metaphor and reality, and the stories we tell ourselves – it’s okay to not always know what to do, but you don’t have to be alone.

With down to earth, authentic performances, it’s more than watchable and they’re likeable characters, even at their most desperate. In an intrigued way, I’d like their stories extended, maybe with a series, for a fuller rounder story but there’s a lot of good stuff that delves deep enough to offer an gratifying 90 minutes with many setups covered. Ballywalter also values comedy in the best kind of way, when it can be at its most rewarding, as an upbeat feeling out of nothingness – and celebrates how surprising connections from nowhere can change life for the better.

Ballywalter is released in UK and Ireland on 22 September