Today, it was this odd product of Liverpool poet Roger McGough. Set in a bizarre surreal version of the seventies, two men: health freak Bunny (Peter Egan) and cuckolded Trevor (Anthony Douse) swap lives, to the delight of food-loving wife Miriam (Miriam Margoyles). But things do not go swimmingly for everyone...
The film starts with Trevor being turned away from a secretary job by lecherous boss Mr Nigel (Donald Burton) because he isn't a woman in a short skirt. He turns up the next day in unconvincing drag as 'Miss Trevor' but Nigel is completely oblivious to the fact that his lady secretary is a bloke. The delight is when Bunny, as a committed life-swapper, has to take on the role- and all of the sudden, Egan completely steals the show. What starts off as a dated surreal farce because a darkly comic exploration of gender and identity as Egan plays the role of 'Miss Trevor' straight, with no attempt at disguising his sinister deadpan voice. Bunny has seemingly found his 'identity', or is it just a means to an end?
As well as looking like a pastiche of the seventies, there's a creepy outside location, on a grass chess board under a disturbingly coloured sun. The surreal touches, such as cut-away gags, strangely work, and there's a comically endearing love song between Trevor and Miriam about food. Particularly around Miriam's character, McGough's poet background comes into play; Margoyles delivers a hilarious monologue about the feelings of fruit and vegetables in retaliation to Bunny's veganism (one of the odder lines being 'peas ripped from their scrotums').
If you liked Black Mirror- particularly the controversy of the opening episode, The National Anthem- you might embrace this surreal farce, which is somewhere in between a dream and a nightmare.