Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown is a short comedy film made by The Comic Strip for the BBC, first broadcast in the UK in 1993.
The film employs techniques of metafictional parody to make overt critical comparisons between 1990s TV detective shows and their 1970s counterparts. The editorial line taken throughout the film presents a very affectionate portrayal of several of these 1970s shows, despite acknowledging their use of styles and methods that had since become somewhat clichéd.
The title parodies the title of the 1988 film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.Synopsis
The film opens on the studio set of a fictional 1990s TV show, The Gourmet Detective. This is depicted as a crass cross-genre detective/cookery series ("two recipes and one murder per show"), whose lead character (played by Keith Allen) presents his recipe in a style that parodies Keith Floyd. Allen's "on-screen" Gourmet Detective character is the epitome of politically correct "new man" compassion, but the actor "off-screen" is shown to be an obnoxious, drug-taking womaniser. He is subsequently murdered – the second TV detective to be killed in six months – and the rest of the film involves the search for his assassin.
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