Catnip for dog-lovers is one way of describing Toa Fraser�s endearingly eccentric creation. Barking would be another.

Star rating: ***
Dir: Toa Fraser
With: Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Peter O'Toole

CATNIP for dog-lovers is one way of describing Toa Fraser's endearingly eccentric creation. Barking would be another. But we'll stop with the dog puns now - cross my paws.

Set in a chilly Edwardian London of stiff collars and starched attitudes, Dean Spanley is a nicely played hodgepodge of comedy and drama that looks up at you with its big eyes and big heart and demands to have its tummy rubbed. Sorry.

Adapted from the novella by Lord Dunsany, the dean of the title is played by one of Britain's favourite Aussie actors, Sam Neill. Dean Spanley, a broad-minded sort of cleric, decides one day to go along to a lecture on reincarnation.

With him in the audience are Fisk Senior (Peter O'Toole) and his son (Jeremy Northam). From that meeting a friendship develops between young Fisk and the Dean.

It's a curious pairing helped along by the Dean's love of exotic wine, and Fisk's taste for even more exotic stories. Stories are what Fisk doesn't get from his buttoned-up father.

Their relationship, such as it is, consists of weekly visits where the conversation is as strained as the Darjeeling.

To say any more would spoil the joke at the heart of Fraser's picture. You will guess it early on, but half the fun is waiting for the rest of the cast, including Peter O'Toole on grand form as a crusty old pater who shouts "poppycock" a lot, and Bryan Brown, that other acting treasure from Oz, to catch on.

It takes a special talent to make audiences swallow whimsy these days. Though Fraser (playwright and director of the similarly crowd-pleasing No 2) strains the patience towards the end, this is a sweet tale, well told.