Michelle’s film debut panned by the critics

MICHELLE Keegan’s first movie – Strangeways Here We Come – has been savaged by the critics.

She is known for gracing the most famous cobbles in TV, but for her first film, the Irlam-raised star is in a high-rise flat in Salford and in the frame as a murderer.

After its release on Friday, it was given one star by the Guardian and no stars by The Times.

Ex-Corrie star Michelle plays Demi, one of many victims of loan shark Danny Nolan, played by the city’s own Stephen Lord. In the plot Danny’s reign comes to end when those he rips off get the ultimate revenge.

The film was written and directed by Salford lad Chris Green.

But The Guardian says: “This awful Salford-set Shameless rip-off fails to raise any laughs at all from the implausible misadventures of its sink-estate caricatures and sex pests.”

It adds that it has nothing to do with The Smiths’ album of the same name but is ‘roughly as funny as Morrissey.’

The Guardian concludes: “There is one tried-and-tested gag – the one about the old dear who sees a flasher and has a stroke – but the rest isn’t so much a love letter to the people of Salford as a dreadful, perhaps actionable, slur.”

The Times says: “Somewhere between a discarded Viz strip and a Robin Askwith misadventure sits this sleazy ‘comedy.’”

A scathing review by picturesthattalk.com says: “This appalling, obnoxious black comedy, with its condescending attitudes towards the working classes, would give even late-night TV a bad name.”