Strangeways Here We Come

Like the classic curate's egg, this British black comedy is good in parts. Plus points are a quality cast of TV stars, including Coronation Street's Michelle Keegan, and some slick production values. Less laudable are a tone that lacks consistency, and content that required better quality control. A recurring "comic" motif of attacks on a hapless postman is especially ill-judged. The plot has a raggle-taggle bunch of Manchester tower-block tenants banding together to bump off and bury a vicious local loan shark. But they've reckoned without his wife, who proves double the trouble he was. It's a hit-and-miss movie, and hardly the best of British. But, in the parlance of the prison its title references, it's fun enough to be banged-up with it for 90 minutes.