Fleapit revisited:Mindhorn.

"Are you a fan of the show?" - Richard Thorncroft

"My mum liked it" - PC Green

"Is she single?" - Thorncroft

"She's dead" - Green

Despite being a big fan of The Mighty Boosh, I never got round to seeing Sean Foley's Mindhorn when it came out in 2016. Dheepan, Arrival, Weiner, High Rise, The Witch, The Clan, and I, Daniel Blake all took precedence when it came to visiting the cinema (which was fine because they were great films) and Mindhorn never quite became priority viewing for me.

So when it was shown on BBC1 (& iPlayer) recently I thought I'd see if I'd missed anything. I had. Not a classic by any stretch of the imagination but a highly enjoyable caper with some genuinely funny moments. As you may expect with Julian Barratt in the lead role, and supporting roles for the likes of Steve Coogan and Simon Farnaby, Mindhorn is a very silly film.

Silly but engaging. Barratt plays Richard Thorncroft, an ageing actor who'd been big in the eighties when he played the Isle of Man detective Bruce P. Mindhorn but now, twenty-five years later, he wears a wig to cover his baldness and a corset to hold his middle aged spread in as he rails bitterly against the success of Benedict Cumberbatch from his flat in Walthamstow.

Dreams, expectations even, of Hollywood have been replaced by the reality of a life advertising socks and 'man girdles'. It's a far cry from his heyday as Mindhorn. Where his mustard leather jacket and rollneck combo, 'tache, and eyepatch made him a sex symbol and resulted in a range of action figures made in his likeness and, it seems, a heavily notched bedpost.

He even drove a Triumph TR-7. The plot of Mindhorn is fantastically ludicrous. After an accident, Mindhorn has had his eye replaced with a detector that can, literally, see the truth. An advantage in crime solving that leaves Mindhorn described as the Isle of Man's best ever plain clothes detective. If you count an all mustard outfit as plain clothes.

By the modern day most have forgotten Mindhorn, a show that's been eclipsed by a spin off series starring the now hugely rich and successful Peter 'Windjammer' Easterman (Steve Coogan in a role he could probably fax in but makes the most of anyway) but, on the Isle of Man, there is one man who's not forgotten Mindhorn.

That man is Paul Melly (Russell Tovey). Melly styles himself as The Kestrel, and mimics that bird's sound to prove it, he's been accused of a murder on the island and he's threatening more unless he can speak directly to Mindhorn - who he believes is a real person. The Isle of Man police force, led by Chief Inspector Derek Newsome (David Schofield) and Detective Sergeant Elena Baines (Andrea Riseborough), seem at a loss regarding what to do so they call on Mindhorn/Thorncroft.

 

Who sees it, after a fashion, as his route back into the big time. Things, of course, don't pan out that way. Mindhorn finds that the folks on the Isle of Man, The Kestrel aside, either don't remember him or remember him for being rude about the island's "limited gene pool" on Wogan at the peak of his fame. 

He discovers his ex-lover Patricia Deville (Essie Davis) now lives with his former stunt double Clive Parnevik (Simon Farnaby with a ridiculous Dutch accent) and her grown up daughter Jasmine (Jessica Barden). Farnaby rivals Barratt when it comes to silliness, rarely seen with a top on and killing every joke he makes by over explaining it.

Havoc, of course, ensues when Mindhorn finally contacts The Kestrel and if some of the slapstick gags, falling off sofas, mistaking a window for a two way mirror, aren't funny enough to elicit an actual laugh they're, at least, not as cringeworthy as, say, Miranda Hart or Norman Wisdom would have made them.

There are some genuinely funny, LOLworthy, scenes and dialogue though. Mindhorn's spin off single from the eighties "Can't Handcuff the Wind" is neatly observed and when Thorncroft considers the inevitably of death, "we're all gonna die, some with a bang, some with a whimper, some with a weird wasting disease", I nearly spat my San Miguel out.

When Thorncroft's ex-manager Jeffrey Moncrieff (Richard McCabe), now living in a caravan surrounded by empty bottles, cocaine, and a blow up doll, tells Thorncroft he's going to be such a hit that he'll have "minge" coming out of his arse I couldn't help guffawing at both the coarseness of the comment and the unpleasantly surreal image it conjured up.

Thorncroft and Moncrieff's coke and alcohol binge and a scene where Parnevik's car is covered in graffiti of cocks and tits play out less well but don't really impinge on what is, after all, a pleasant diversion rather than a cinematic masterpiece. 

All the main characters, plus Harriet Walter as Thorncroft's agent and Nicholas Farrell as the Mayor of the Isle of Man, give creditable performances (though none, I would imagine, would consider Mindhorn their defining achievement) and Kenneth Branagh and a salad munching Simon Callow give game cameos in a film that if I had seen it in the cinema I'm sure I'd have enjoyed it as much as I did on television but one that didn't necessarily warrant the large screen experience.