In the grip of a bionic sleuth
Mindhorn 15 Cert, 89min
Dir: Sean Foley Starring: Julian Barratt, Essie Davis, Andrea Riseborough, Simon Farnaby, Harriet Walter, Simon Callow, David Schofield, Steve Coogan
Notoriously, tax breaks have made the Isle of Man a haven for British film production in the past two decades. I’ve never been there, and never need to, since by now I’ve seen every inch of it doubling as some other blustery corner of Blighty.
It’s rather a niche joke in Mindhorn that this intentionally tacky British comedy is set there, explicitly, and everyone would frankly rather it weren’t. Back in the Eighties, as the script posits, the island was the stomping ground for a leather-fond TV detective with unusual clairvoyant powers. A “bionic Bergerac”, if you will.
In the way of many profoundly naff Eighties TV detectives, he is long forgotten by all but two people – Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt), the washed-up actor who originally played him, and a deranged serial killer in the present day, who insists on dealing with no one but him.
Barratt, of course, plays him as a deluded braggart, but Thorncroft has nothing better to be doing, except commercials for orthopaedic socks and male corsets. His professional nemesis, surely crying out for a cameo, is John Nettles.
His agent (Harriet Walter) tries to be as tactful as possible about the career wasteland in which Thorncroft finds himself. There’s a jolly scene when he interrupts her meeting with Simon Callow, giving an excellent performance as himself. Reprising the role of Mindhorn, even if it’s purely to aid a police investigation, is about as good as it’s going to get – so it’s back on that ferry for a tragic reunion tour.
Barratt co-wrote this with his Mighty Boosh sidekick Simon Farnaby, who takes the role of Thorncroft’s romantic rival, a smirking and regularly naked Dutch stuntman. His “other” rival is fellow cast member Peter Eastman (Steve Coogan). Having somehow parlayed his supporting role into a successful and Coogan-ishly smug media empire, he is sitting pretty in a Beverly Hills-style McMansion, incongruously located on the Isle of Man itself. How big a mocking chorus of rivals, usurpers and general ill-wishers does a single has-been TV star need?
Mindhorn overeggs all this taunting oneupmanship, perhaps because the serial-killer storyline is getting it nowhere fast. It gets more mileage out of the reliable Richard McCabe as a desperate, unwashed publicity guru living in a grim caravan with a sex doll. And Andrea Riseborough plays it gamely straight as the exasperated cop having to tolerate Thorncroft’s diva ways – I loved him waltzing into the Manx police HQ and immediately demanding an americano.
Coogan produced through his Baby Cow outlet – it’s all a bit smirky and meta to have him there on screen too, agreeing to a long-ignored Mindhorn DVD release. You realise very quickly that Thorncroft, in all his swaggery awfulness, is a beefed-up Partridge clone, and the film is a variation on Alpha Papa, with the same drift towards accidental day-saving and a poignantly thwarted love life.
The best jokes are all dropped in passing, and the last half hour goes a bit too Richard Thorncroft for its own good – the longevity and appeal have plateaued. He needed new screenwriters. But for fans of Barratt, Boosh and mock-heroic Britcoms, it’ll mostly hit the spot.