The Goodbye Girl

Paula McFadden is a divorced mother who's just been walked out on by her actor boyfriend. Worse still, before leaving he sublet the New York apartment she shares with her ten-year-old daughter Lucy, without telling her. The new tenant is Elliot Garfield, another actor, just arrived from Chicago, and neither of them is willing to give the place up.

So they end up sharing it, and life under one roof for a woman who's tired of being left and a man with quirks of his own gets off to a rocky start. Meanwhile Elliot is rehearsing an off-off-Broadway 'Richard III' for a director with some very peculiar ideas about the play.

'The Goodbye Girl' is a TV remake of the 1977 romantic comedy that won Richard Dreyfuss an Oscar, and Neil Simon adapted his own screenplay for it. "Why change something when it works so well?" he said at the time, and the story barely changes: the main updates are a mobile phone and a passing mention of hybrid cars.

Patricia Heaton, then Debra in 'Everybody Loves Raymond', steps into Marsha Mason's shoes, and Jeff Daniels takes over from Dreyfuss. Hallie Kate Eisenberg plays Lucy and Alan Cumming is the eccentric theatre director. Richard Benjamin directed and gave himself a small part, and Hootie & the Blowfish recorded a new version of David Gates' song 'Goodbye Girl'.

TNT aired it on 16 January 2004 to a lukewarm response. The New York Times liked Heaton, Variety wondered why it needed to exist at all, and its average across the three outlets collected on Movienco is 4.3 out of 10.

• Comedy
• Romance