It Couldn’t Happen Here 1987

In the early morning light along the Clacton-on-Sea coast in Essex, a troupe of dancers warms up on the sand while Neil Tennant rides in on a bicycle, the air alive with the song It Couldn’t Happen Here. He pedals toward a seaside kiosk to buy postcards from the shopkeeper, a moment brought to life by Gareth Hunt. The shopkeeper rails against the political faults of the modern world, but Neil stays focused, scribbling messages as the sea breeze mingles with the chatter of the promenade.

Meanwhile, inside a bed-and-breakfast, Chris Lowe is seen hastily packing and tossing the room’s contents into a seeming bottomless trunk. He heads downstairs to a breakfast scene where the landlady is portrayed by Barbara Windsor and Uncle Dredge keeps up a volley of corny jokes, though the landlady disapproves of most guests except for Chris, who sits with a cool, almost detached calm. When a gargantuan Full English arrives, Chris dumps it over the landlady’s head and bolts into the street, sprinting along the promenade as a gang of bikers closes in behind him.

On the beach again, Neil cycles past a priest, played by Joss Ackland, who recites verses while guiding a line of schoolchildren. At the pier, the young versions of the duo appear: two boys who are essentially the Pet Shop Boys in miniature, and they glimpse a Victorian-era Mutoscope showing a bedroom farce in which [Chris Lowe] (as the squire) and [Neil Tennant] (as the butler) make advances toward a French maid, a sequence filmed at the West Cliff Theatre. The priest catches up and shouts again, and the boys slip into an amusement arcade, where a rock star in a gold tasselled suit—featuring [Neil Tennant]—makes a fleeting appearance. They wander into a theatre where a risqué dance by a chorus of nuns accompanies the song It’s a Sin. As evening falls, the priest leads them outside and orders twelve fishermen to haul a huge cross out of the sea onto their ship, a striking image that lingers.

The adults return to the waterfront, where they pass three rappers performing West End Girls and continue to a classic car. The car salesman is the role of Neil Dickson, who gives a full sales pitch that the pair repeatedly interrupts. They settle the purchase in cash and drive off, with Chris at the wheel. A radio report interrupts with news of a hitchhiker who has killed three people who gave him lifts. The passenger who fits the killer’s description climbs in—a man described with a wild line of wit—and, as the journey unfolds, he unpacks several knives from his bag, then suddenly asks to be let out. The Pet Shop Boys press on, unscathed, to the next stop.

At a transport café, the travellers share a table with a pilot who fiddles with a handheld computer game that mutters about division and zero (a nod to lyrics from Two Divided by Zero). A ventriloquist’s dummy from the traveler’s case begins philosophizing about time, while a wall of the café rises to reveal dancers when a jukebox spins Rent. The pilot, back in his office, reads The Structure of Time by W. H. Newton-Smith and ultimately concludes that “the dummy’s a blasted existentialist.” He then boards his plane, determined to silence the silly musings, and a tense chase ensues.

The duo pause at a telephone box vandalized by a group of youths, and they reconnect with one another as they speak the lines to a memory of their relationship. Neil then phones his mother, the landlady who has been a steady presence throughout this strange, winding day, and the two share a moment set to the refrain of What Have I Done to Deserve This? The moment fractures when, at the door, Neil’s head rests against the broken glass, a hint of blood marking the end of that scene.

A suburban street unfolds next, where a commuter steps out to a blazing upstairs window and a zebra is led by two zebra-faced men into a goods van. Neil and Chris watch from a platform as a large snake coils around them, carried away in a waiting van toward Paddington station. At Paddington, soldiers stand guard and a limousine awaits the two, who climb inside and speed through a tunnel. The chauffeur, who again columns Milton’s lines from Paradise Lost, guides them toward a final stage: a nightclub. They enter and perform One More Chance for a crowd of dancers, each with a number on their back. When the routine ends, Neil and Chris ascend the stairs to leave, only to find that their own backs bear the number “0,” marking a stark, minimalist conclusion to the day’s surreal journey.