Gideon's Daughter
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Gideon's Daughter is the second of two linked BBC television dramas written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff.
Produced independently for the BBC by talkbackTHAMES and starring Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, and Emily Blunt, it aired in the UK on BBC One on February 26, 2006 and in the US on BBC America a month later. The first of the dramas, Friends and Crocodiles, had been broadcast the previous month, with the character of Sneath (Robert Lindsay) appearing in both and acting as the narrator of Gideon's Daughter.
Both Nighy and Blunt received Golden Globe Awards for their performances.
[edit] Story
Exploring themes of love, loss, parenthood, and the cult of celebrity, it is set against the backdrop of New Labour's rise to power, the death of Princess Diana, and the ill-advised development of the Millennium Dome. Gideon is a hotshot publicist and the widowed father of a sullen teenage daughter, driven to the edge of a nervous breakdown by her emotional detachment from him. She is resentful that he was a serial adulterer who was calling his mistress as her mother lay dying of cancer. To put distance between them, she at first plans to do volunteer work in South America or (her father's preferred choice) to study at the University of Edinburgh.
Stella is mourning the death of her young son, killed while riding his bike for the first time. Afraid of sleep, and desperate to escape her sense of bereavement, she works the night shift in a supermarket where she raises guinea pigs in the back. She meets Gideon when her ex-husband tries to accost one of Gideon's clients, a New Labour minister, about the government's lack of response to the unsafe traffic conditions that caused their son's death. Soon after the chance meeting, the two find themselves developing an emotional bond, brought together by a shared sense of grief and loss.
