Told alternately in the present and the past, Late in the Day follows the lives of two arty and fairly wealthy London couples, Alex and Christine, and Zachary and Lydia. The quartet turns into a trio in no time with the sudden death of Zachary from a heart attack. Christine is a fairly well-known artist, and her husband Alex a primary school headmaster, having given up an earlier attempt to become a writer. Lydia has been Christine’s closest friend from their childhood days, and Zach owned a flourishing art gallery. Alex and Zach have been close since school days as well, due to a common non-British background. All in all, a rather incestuous group (not literally, mind you). But without the expansive Zach to hold them together, the remaining three have begun to fall apart. Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine, in retrospect, not a good move to allow her to do that. Their marriage is on shaky grounds, and then there are the two young adult daughters, one for each pair, as well as a stepson thrown into the mix.
I find the London art scene a weird milieu (New York is just as bad) with a lot of money, huge egos, and not a small smattering of high school style drama involved. So it was hard for me to get involved in these characters’ lives initially. But I must admit, by the end, I cared about what happened to them.
And really, allowing grieving widows to move in with no time limits? Such a bad move, people.