8 minutes idle

This modest charmer from BBC Films charts ten days in the life of a call-centre worker who finds himself turfed out of the family home along with his cat. Good-looking, affable but hopelessly ineffectual 20-something Dan (Tom Hughes) is left with no alternative but to sleep secretly in the store cupboard at work, spending his evenings mooching about in his pants and making mischief in his boss's office. Hughes gives a delightfully dozy performance as he's given the runaround by the women in his life: subtly kooky colleague Ophelia Lovibond, predatory line manager Montserrat Lombard and his homicidal, malaprop-spouting mother Pippa Haywood. A downbeat office karaoke party and the trials of keeping a pet hidden in the workplace add to the quirkiness, although the comedy may be a trifle low-key and offbeat for some. But like a pleasingly warped version of TV's The Office, Mark Simon Hewis's film captures the inconsequential nature of nine-to-five desk jockeying, while the Bristol backdrop lends it plenty of character.