Whats-On

This is a past event

BBFC RatingMindhorn

Certificate15
Year2016
GenreComedy
Director(s)Sean Foley
CountryUK
Running Time1HR 29MINS
SeasonMain Programme
Audio AccessibleClosed CaptioningACCESS SCREENING The 8.45pm screening on Tues 16 May will include audio description and on-screen captioning.

Washed-up Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt) peaked with hit 1980s detective show Mindhorn, playing the titular Isle of Man sleuth with a robotic eye that allowed him to literally “see the truth”.

Fast-forward 25 years and he is now a paunchy, balding, increasingly desperate washed-up actor living in poverty in London.

But fate hands Thorncroft a bizarre chance at redemption when a mentally unbalanced fugitive killer on the Isle of Man, Melly (Russell Tovey), contacts police officer DC Baines (Andrea Riseborough) and demands to negotiate with Mindhorn himself. Obsessed with the TV show since childhood, Melly has come to believe the fictional detective is real, and can help prove his innocence. Thorncroft arrives on the island in high spirits, hoping to boost his profile and rekindle his relationship with his beautiful- once- onscreen/offscreen flame Patricia Deville (Essie Davis) who is still in the Isle of Man, employed as a local TV journalist, happily married to a man who was once Thorncroft’s stuntman.

Inevitably, his plans unravel as ancient grievances, bad habits and murderous subplots muddy the waters.

The Mighty Boosh’s Julian Barratt and co-writer Simon Farnaby’s joyously off-the-wall creation follows in the grand tradition of pompous, spectacularly oblivious yet vulnerable British losers, from Alan Partridge to David Brent.


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