Strange Relations

Desperate circumstances lead a man to a family he never knew he had in this made-for-cable comedy-drama. Jerry Lipman (Paul Reiser) is a psychiatrist living in New York City. Lipman's career is going well, he makes great money, and he's dating several attractive women, but his seemingly perfect life takes a sudden turn for the worse when a trip to the doctor reveals that he's suffering from leukemia. A bone marrow transplant could turn Lipman's condition around, but the most reliable donors are siblings, and since Jerry was an only child, the chances of finding a compatible donor are very slim indeed. Or at least that's what Lipman believes until his mother (Olympia Dukakis) informs him that he was actually adopted; his biological mother was a young woman living in England, and Lipman flies to England in hopes of tracking down his birth family. Lipman eventually discovers his biological mother, Sheila Fitzpatrick (Julie Walters), and finds he has two half-siblings, solid and responsible Frank (Tony Maudsley) and chemically dependent jailbird Derek (Ian Puleston-Davies). Lipman wants to get to know his new "family" before he makes such an important request of them as to donate some bone marrow, but he soon discovers that he and Sheila's family are as different as night and day; things aren't made any easier when Lipman becomes infatuated with Maureen (Amy Robbins), Derek's ex-wife. Strange Relations was written by actor-turned-screenwriter Tim Kazurinsky; the film premiered on the Showtime premium cable network on March 31, 2002.