Synopsis
There are two things that single out Dan Starkey (David Thewlis) from the rest of Northern Ireland? silent majority. First, as the author of a weekly satirical column in the Belfast Evening News, he? a bit mouthier than most. Secondly, he drinks. A lot. The election for the first Prime Minister of an independent Northern Ireland is days away, and Starkey has been sharpening up his satire for the occasion. On his way home, Starkey falls down drunk in Botanic Park. Margaret, a pretty young art student witnesses his fall and the two hit it off. The two get caught kissing at his own party by his enraged wife and are forced to flee to Margaret? place. Once there, they top off the evening with the real thing by sleeping together and later she gives him a D-for-Dan cassette as a gift. The situation turns for the worse the next evening when he finds Margaret lying in a pool of blood on the bed. Before dying in his arms, she manages to say the words ?ivorce...Jack? He later learns that Margaret? father is the right-arm man of Michael Brinn(Robert Lindsay), the strongest candidate for Prime Minister. Before Margaret, Starkey had always made it a point to keep out of the political fray, preferring instead to snipe at both sides from the safety of his weekly newspaper column. Now his quest to find her killers, rescue his floundering marriage and save his country, leads him directly to its rotten heart.