The wonderful Juliet Stevenson starred alongside David Haig and Dakota Blue Richards in Dustbin Baby which was shown on Sunday 21st on BBC1. If you missed it, you can catch up with it on BBC’s iPlayer and it’s well worth watching.

It was a powerful – albeit somewhat unrealistic at times – family drama based on the novel by best-selling author Jacqueline Wilson.

Dustbin Baby centred around the sad but ultimately uplifting story of teenager April – played by Dakota Blue Richards – who set out to discover where she came from. Along the way, she discovered that she’d been abandoned in a dustbin at birth. On her 14th birthday, April walked out on her foster mother Marion following a row, and set out to trace her past.

Juliet Stevenson played the role of Marion, a spinsterish ex-teacher who’d struck up a tentative friendship April who had been her pupil. The unlikely pair spent time together and eventually, Marion fostered April who had spent her life in and out of foster and care homes following the suicide of the woman who’d adopted her as a baby.

April’s early years had been sad ones; first the suicide of the woman she called mother scarred her deeply, then later, after not fitting in at any of her foster homes, she was placed in a care home where she was bullied and menaced by a girl called Pearl. April’s only friend was Gina, so when Gina left the care home, April often ran away trying to find her, but to no avail.

Marion taught April at the home and was impressed by the girl’s spirit and intelligence, but April and Marion were very different; April was a troubled teenager, Marion a teacher turned stately home guide who was dowdy and somewhat unworldly. However, the pair recognised a kindred spirit in each other but on April’s birthday, the girl’s disappointment at not being given a mobile phone sparked an argument between the two and April stormed off.

She chose that day to go back to the world she’d left behind and visited one of the foster homes she’d been in as well as one of the care homes, but she found the home closed down and abandoned. At the foster home where she was taken as a baby, April talked to the woman who’d taken her in. Her ex-foster mother gave her a newspaper cutting that documented her being found in a bin behind a pizza parlour by Frankie, a pizza delivery boy, so April set out to find the place where her history began.

Meanwhile, Marion, with the help of her old friend Elliot – played by David Haig – tried to understand where she’d gone wrong with April and frantically searched for her foster daughter. With Elliot’s help, Marion began to realise that she was very much out of touch with the life of a teenager and she resolved that things would be different, if only she could find April and prove it to her.

As Marion searched, April visited Reno’s, the pizza parlour where she’d been abandoned and saw a message scratched into the metal bin behind the shop which said “Baby, please call….” April assumed it was her biological mother who’d left the message but it turned out to be Frankie, the young man who’d found her.

The two arranged to meet at Reno’s and as Frankie told April all about how he found her, Marion arrived, tearfully overjoyed that she’d found April. After some hesitancy, April said sorry to Marion for running away and for treating her badly, and Marion happily gave April the new mobile phone she’d bought for her.

It was a tear jerking ending as the two, united by their differences, happily chatted with Frankie.

This was a really touching drama and my only criticism of it is that towards the end, it felt rather ‘rushed’. The story had evolved at a pace that fitted the story but as the end approached, it felt to me that the writers had forced a major part of the story into the final fifteen minutes.

For instance, it was rather too convenient when April phoned the number that was scratched into the bin; the call was answered and at first, April didn’t speak but the person on the other end somehow knew it was ‘the baby’. It just seemed too trite.

Other than that though, it was a marvelous drama that was made all the better by the casting of Juliet Stevenson and Dakota Blue Richards. The chemistry between them on screen was convincing, moving and joyous to watch. What did you think of it?