Blended

My children were raised on the original Postman Pat cartoons from the Eighties so it’s heartbreaking to see what’s been done to bring Pat to the big screen.

However, fans of the considerably updated series from the mid-Noughties may be more forgiving, especially as the voice cast now includes David Tennant and Rupert Grint – and Pat’s singing is done by Ronan Keating.

Anyway, out goes bucolic charm and in comes a Britain’s Got Talent-style TV show, a ghastly character called Simon Cowbell and a ruthless manager intent on replacing Pat and his colleagues with robots that can fire killer laser beams.

They tried the same thing with Top Cat in 2012, and that didn’t work either.

The actor John Turturro is 57 and better known for nervy, comic supporting turns than as a romantic leading man. So it’s a surprise to find him playing a New York gigolo – until you realise he’s written and directed Fading Gigolo himself, that ‘fading’ is to the fore, and that he’s playing it gently for laughs.

The result is funny and rather lovely, with Woody Allen costarring in a film he wouldn’t be embarrassed to have made himself.

Allen plays Murray, whose bookshop is having to close, threatening his own livelihood and that of his part-time employee, Fioravante (Turturro). So when Murray’s dermatologist, played by Sharon Stone, asks whether he knows of anyone