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Britain’s finest comedy character since Alan Partridge returns for a big screen outing as face-scrunching as his finest television moments. Ricky Gervais lifts David Brent from the confines of beloved Slough to take his band, ‘Foregone Conclusion’, on a pitiful tour of the South East, taking heed of Partridges’ own cinematic outing, Alpha Papa, not to stray far from the drab greyness of England in the process. Much like Coogan’s film took great strides to inhabit the body of an authentic action movie, Life on the Road makes a real effort to align itself with the rock band belligerence of This Is Spinal Tap.





This isn’t to say the laughter lies in Brent’s music being sloppily written or shockingly performed (in fact, largely the opposite is true), but rather in the way his trademark misunderstanding of political correctness and woefully misplaced self-belief is woven expertly into genuinely catchy songs. You won’t realise you’ve been subconsciously knee-tapping to tunes including Please Don’t Make Fun of the Disabled until the camera flits from a blissfully engrossed Brent to the faces of the on-screen audience (at least, those who bothered to turn up) or those of his bandmates valiantly rapping, plucking and drumming through the embarrassment.





While the various gigs work as self-contained set pieces, everything else in-between is classic Brent, his gurning laughter and po-faced refusal of reason eliciting everything from reflective smirks, sudden bursts of belly laughter and, of course, full-body cringing. A low-key breakdown in a psychiatrist’s office is the epitome of Gervais’ creation, and a tattoo parlour mishap transfigures the midway point between Slough and Reading from a mark on the AA roadmap into a side-splitting piece of wordplay.





Yes, references to Slough are plentiful (and I think we can agree that any Brent story would feel empty without them), but no-one should go into this expecting a visit to the Wernham Hogg offices or appearances from classic cast members. The ‘Sergio Giorigini’ jacket is back, and a comedy character from Gervais’ XFM days is revived in toe-curling fashion, but there’s an absence of overwrought pandering to nostalgia; a real breath-freshener in a summer so irritably reliant on raiding your childhood toy box for inspiration. The new characters such as Tom Bennett’s Nigel (a cubicle screwball who nurses a slavish devotion to The Brentmeister General) and Ben Bailey Smith’s ambitious and exasperated rapper, Dom, may not hold the same side-line interest of Tim or Gareth, but the mere fact we’re getting entirely new creations in lieu of rehashed material is reason enough to enjoy their company. Brent aside, Dom is the only character to have a fully-fleshed out arc, also delivering superb raps both in the midst of the endlessly quotable Equality Street and in a last-ditch attempt to break free from the band.





No, you didn’t misread that; I did in fact claim that David Brent, one of the most reliably one-note personalities in comedy actually develops. Sure, it’s a rather predictable series of events, but the very last frame is a short but sweet adage to the character that may require a little eye-drying. Maybe I’ve binge-watched the entire original series too recently or perhaps I’m aching for a more idiosyncratic outing for British comedy than the ho-hum, cameo-adorned sheen of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, but I felt very much at home watching Life on the Road. In spite of its front-loaded laugh graph and the consistently, deliberately dull Office-style visuals lending a little less than a cinematic feel, it more than makes the grade, causing any memory of Gervais’ failed Netflix feature, Special Correspondents, to evaporate on contact.