Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown 1993

The film opens on the studio set of a fictional 1990s TV show, The Gourmet Detective. The lead detective of this show, Keith Allen, presents his recipes with a wink to Keith Floyd, turning the kitchen into a comic backdrop for crime solving. The on-screen persona embodies the era’s polished, “new man” ideal, yet off-camera he is shown to be blunt, self-indulgent, and deeply flawed. When this glamorous, TV-friendly figure is murdered—the second detective to fall in six months—the film pivots from parody to a pursuit that questions the nature of televised justice and the people who perform it.

Commander Jim Carter is exasperated by the initial detective, Dave Spanker, whose instincts lean more toward nostalgia than solid leads. The crime scene yields a few intriguing clues: a smear of cheesecloth and the footprint of a 1970s platform shoe that seems unusually telling. To crack the case, the police bring in detectives cut from a very different cloth—Bonehead, Foyle, and George—retro sleuths who operate with a mindset steeped in older TV conventions. When the platform shoe is finally dated to the early 1970s, Jason Bentley steps in to join the team, and the commander makes it clear that Bentley’s methods—“no guns, no fast cars, no shouting”—are to be followed. The trio of old-school investigators chafes at the restriction, and Bentley’s presence sends them racing toward a country house, where they drink claret, chain-smoke, and wait for a breakthrough that never quite lands.

At one point, the commander formally tasks the team with a tight 48-hour window, hoping that a more disciplined approach will yield results. In a moment of daylight-quick irony, the team heads to an East End drinking den, where the atmosphere sizzles with banter and bravado. In the midst of the pub drama, George tries to get a look at his informant, while Bonehead and Foyle—emboldened by alcohol and bravado—storm the restroom in a comically overblown fashion. It is Bentley who finally turns the tide with a concrete forensic clue: the platform shoes were bought in Newcastle upon Tyne. The confession from Spanker arrives next, revealing that he acted under the pressure to improve TV ratings, though he attempts to slip away afterward.

A high-octane, 1970s-style car chase erupts, stretching across a vast yard where the cars circle with little purpose but plenty of noise. Foyle’s gearbox takes a beating from the repeated handbrake turns, and Bonehead even toys with walking away from his partner in frustration—only to plunge back into the pursuit as if the past era of street chases could somehow be recaptured. The chase spills into London Docklands, where the old and the new collide against a backdrop of redevelopment and rising towers. The two seasoned detectives—Bonehead and Foyle—pursue the culprit through the docks, ultimately discarding their trousers in a cheeky nod to their antiquated, rough-and-tumble methods, while city workers look on with bemused detachment.

Meanwhile, George tries to coax Spanker into surrender. Spanker laments that the heightened realism of modern TV detective shows has robbed him of the flashy thrills enjoyed by his 1970s counterparts—the fast cars, the dramatic gunplay, and the big, bravura moments. In a moment that seems to bend the plot into its own meta joke, Bentley materializes precisely when the moment calls for him and captures Spanker with easy efficiency. George then formulates a peculiar punishment: Spanker will be “shot on tape” and reshaped into a faceless, uniform officer who will perform three nights a week in a soap-style parallel to real police drama, effectively becoming part of The Bill.

The film closes on a buoyant note, with Bonehead, Foyle, George, Bentley, and the commander sharing a toast to the Seventies, acknowledging the era that birthed their unorthodox methods and the strange hybrid of crime-solving and show business that defines their world. The end leaves a sly smile on the audience and a lingering question about whether television itself ever truly changes its most persistent habits.