I’m always nervous when politically minded filmmakers aspire to move people to action with their work – especially comedy. I prefer the satirical sensibility of Warren Beatty’s “Bulworth” to the in-your-face polemics of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” if only because I go to movies mostly to escape, not embrace, the feelings of moral outrage that consume me about the world. Of course, who would have known that Richard Curtis, the writer of such treacly romantic comedies as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Love Actually,” would turn out to care so deeply about world poverty? Starvation is the theme of his new HBO film “The Girl in the Cafe,” which debuts this Saturday at 8 p.m. In the unlikely event you end up with a lump in your throat at the end, Mr. Curtis would like you to donate it to hungry children in Africa.

As with all of Mr. Curtis’s scripts, there’s an improbable love story at the core of “The Girl in the Cafe.” This time it’s between Lawrence (Bill Nighy), a repressed British government bureaucrat, and Gina (Kelly Macdonald), a mousy younger woman (at least until she lets down her bob) who meet by chance in a cafe opposite no. 10 Downing St. in London. They stammer their way through a couple of encounters before Gina discovers that her new love interest works for the chancellor of the exchequer and is headed to Iceland for the 2005 G-8 economic summit. (Yes, in this movie that’s considered a bonus.) Gina wangles an invite to Reykjavik, and before long she’s mingling with a gaggle of government advisers setting policy about world poverty initiatives. As you might expect, that’s when the fun begins!

I’m being a little harsh. There’s actually something a bit touching about the romance between Lawrence and Gina, especially as performed by the talented British actors Mr. Nighy (from “Love Actually”) and Ms. Macdonald (most famous as Peter Pan in “Finding Neverland”). Their attraction overwhelms their own insecurities in a way that’s far more identifiable than the typical Curtis scenario, which involves us believing that Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are stumbling their way through relationships. Here, the sex between Lawrence and Gina is almost an afterthought to the more powerful agenda: Gina’s desire to disrupt the G-8 Summit and force British leaders not to compromise on their poverty plank in this year’s conference. Gina can’t hold back; every time she sees the chancellor of the exchequer, she feels a compulsion to lecture him on the sins of a stagnant public policy. She’s not, by Mr. Curtis’s usual standards, a fun date.

But that turns out to be precisely the point. The romance blossoms with every inappropriate remark, and Lawrence – the mumbling, ineffectual policy wonk whose entire past life appears to have been a sorry compromise – grows energized by Gina’s outbursts. It’s his character that transforms in this romance; he’s Mr. Curtis’s ugly duckling, and his stilted mannerisms become an odd pleasure to watch. It’s all an obvious manipulation – mawkish sentimentality is Mr. Curtis’s specialty – but somehow Mr. Nighy pulls off a performance that reminds us, without nauseating us, of the unique and overpowering calculus of love. When Gina finally confronts the British prime minister with her radical worldview at a formal dinner, Lawrence doesn’t cringe; he looks toward her with an expression that reads, “Isn’t she amazing?”

For those accustomed to a good cry at the end of a Richard Curtis spectacle, “The Girl in the Cafe” will disappoint a little. There’s not much meat to the romance, and in the end the point seems to be less about love than liberalism. The crawl over the closing credits is a pedantic message about poverty that keeps this movie’s tone of overkill alive. But somehow, in its multitude of quiet moments, there’s a sweet and understated story here of mismatched love that is much more beguiling than I ever imagined it would be. With his mind distracted by global concerns, Mr. Curtis inadvertently slipped a human scale romance into his formulaic mix.

***

The third episode of HBO’s “The Comeback” last Sunday continued, sadly, in the grotesque direction set by its first two. Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) has now been assigned a bad dressing room, stood up for lunch by one of her comely co-stars, and put through her step-daughter’s obvious attempt to latch on to her celebrity for a little reality television face time of her own. This show’s portrayal of the backstage world of television sitcoms is so harshly exaggerated that you would never know its otherwise talented creators live in large houses paid for by them. Now that the writers and star of “The Comeback” (and the powers that be at HBO) have had a chance to read the uniformly negative reviews of their efforts – and noticed the show’s dismal ratings – maybe they’ll recognize the need to re-think the concept, to make Valerie Cherish’s journey to redemption a little less painful and its commentary on Hollywood a little less obvious. There’s still time for this show to turn itself into something worth watching – a turnaround on the level of this season’s vastly improved HBO series “Entourage.” I’m not giving up yet.