After their farm goes under during the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in 2001 and their father commits suicide, elder son Adam (Barry Ward, JIMMY'S HALL) flees to the city working transient jobs with relationships that last just as long, scrounging bars before closing time to get drunk off of what's left in glasses at empty tables in order to sleep. Ten years after leaving, he receives a phone call from his younger brother Aiden with the ultimatum to come home for the birth of his first child or not come back at all. With no money and few possessions, Adam begins the journey home from London, revisiting old haunts and finding friends (former and some still grudgingly current) and family have moved on without him. As he gets nearer to home, the weight of past secrets and unresolved emotions makes the lure of his empty existence - as well as the faint possibility of something more with current girlfriend Haley (Hayley Squires, COMPLICIT) - a temptation stronger than reconnecting with his love ones. His cousin's (Keith McErlean) misguided attempt to seek help for him from reformed "sinner" Debo (Jimmy Akingbola, TV's HOLBY CITY) has him believing more than ever that God has abandoned him (even if only in the symbolic sense).

Produced in collaboration with Gucci of all companies, BLOOD CELLS is a striking low-key British drama about a man whose self-imposed exile has him living on the margins of the marginalized of British society. The degree of joylessness in Adam's existence seems overwrought until the viewer comes to realize that this self-exile is not just an escape from difficult emotions but a form of self-punishment which leads him to agreeing to easy money schemes with his girlfriend that are humiliating and leave him feeling empty (it also makes sense of the seemingly roundabout trajectory of his journey). Ward is excellent in what is mostly a one man show, with good support from performers who are naturalistic rather than showy in smaller roles. If the ending turn seems a bit abrupt, it is because Adam's depth of despair is such that it would seem just as natural for the film to end on an even darker note.