Nigel and chums have already broken America, or at least Fox News. But they need to conquer Hollywood. The role of a lifetime beckons for Cumberbatch

What happens when you put it all on red and it comes up white supremacy? These are testing times for the self-styled “Bad Boys of Brexit”, as Nigel Farage and his entourage – the Enfarage – find themselves increasingly out of their depth in That America. Can it really be just nine months since they were photographed like gormless competition-winners in front of the gold lift doors in Donald Trump’s penthouse? On Tuesday, the president was excreted from the other end of that same lift shaft, and proceeded to row back on any appearance he might have given of being vaguely against actual Nazis.

Mmm. Farage and his backer Arron Banks have always treated their relationship with Trump as the imprimatur of a certain kind of success and belated cool – even though, to the rest of us, it all resembles the former school geek who turns up to his class reunion with a hooker, in a hired Mazda MX-5. But however you slice it, the Bad Boys seem increasingly anxious to appear relevant – and we shall come to the announcement of a landmark US TV series about their antics shortly.

For now, you may be wondering how the self-styled Bad Boys of Brexit differ from the Bad Boys of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. I would say it’s very, very finely balanced. But that bit at the start of Bad Boys II, where Will and Martin storm a torchlit Klan rally? I think it would be pretty much exactly the same with Farage and Banks, except instead of shooting up the entire white-hooded scene, the Bad Boys of Brexit would produce a tweet reading: “President Trump, an outstanding unifying force for a country divided by a shamefully blinkered liberal elite #WednesdayWisdom.”

I bet Michael Bay wishes he had thought of that shit. In fact, looked at without our shameful blinkers on, what is Bad Boys except a movie franchise about a couple of Black Lives Matter/antifa who have infiltrated the police force and are slo-mo firing guns to terrorise some peaceful protesters exercising their first-amendment rights?

While you ponder that, a word on Nigel and Arron, who have made the classic mistake of mid-tier British soap-opera stars who relocate to the US on the assumption they are going to make it big. Instead of staging pap shots of themselves reading movie scripts around a hotel pool, the Enfarage have taken a five-year (!) lease on a house in Washington, which they have described as “the alternative British embassy”, probably because it sounds better than “somewhere Nigel can wait around forlornly between cable news appearances in the hope that Donald’s going to ask him to a quick early dinner”. Many of us can recall that feeling of having acres of anxious time on our hands and no phone call from our crush to fill it – we were all 14 once – but whether it is a healthy situation for a ragingly insecure man of 53 is quite another matter. Still, I’m sure the alt-embassy will provide a welcome refuge to any black Britons who find themselves being chased down the meaner streets of Washington by torch-bearing American unifiers.

In the meantime, this week saw the perhaps precipitous announcement of a TV series based on Banks’s referendum diary, The Bad Boys of Brexit. According to various reports, a major studio is set to sign a $60m (£47m) deal to bring the story to the small screen. The adaptation is set to run in six parts, and it is set to begin filming in the New Year. “Set to”, “set to”, “set to” … you’ll have noticed this story’s got more set-tos than a Wetherspoons carpark at chucking out time. And $10m an episode is the same as Game of Thrones, so do expect Nigel’s CGI dragons to look incredible.

I know what you’re thinking: this is just like that Jamie Vardy movie that they’re still definitely going to make! Except with six parts – so it’s like Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur movies, too! This is basically the Vardy movie crossed with Ritchie’s Arthur movies – which is as purely Brexit as you can get, short of sharing a bucket of chlorinated chicken with Liam Fox in an abandoned East Midlands car plant.

My own interest was in what genre they would be going for. Would it be a one-last-job story, a sort of snug-bar version of The Expendables, where a ragtag band of misfits – and let’s face it … – unite to pull off the ultimate mission impossible. But having read the reports, I see they’ve gone for telling it all from the perspective of Gerry Gunster, the US political strategist Banks hired to help them in the referendum. According to the briefed synopsis, Gunster is “the respected US expert being employed to control these British lunatics in the referendum”. Aha. So it’s one of those ones where some hotshot falls on hard times and has to coach little league – then ends up taking them all the way to nationals. Think of it as the Bad News Bears of casual bigotry, and expect a rousing “string one up for the Gipper” speech at the start of act three.

Even so, it’s when we get to casting speculation that things start to feel especially meth-assisted. What’s not to enjoy about the Daily Express’s well-briefed report on the matter, which declares: “Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey or Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch have been tipped to play Mr Farage.”

And I’ve been tipped to be the Premier League’s top goalscorer. “However,” howevers the Express, “the tweed-loving MEP has hinted at playing himself.” Quoth Farage: “I am hoping if they do make the film, I think I should play me. I am really good at being me.”

Oh, mate … You’re terrible at it. You conceded twice on referendum night alone. As for the other dramatis personae, a Ukip spokesman wonders to the Express: “Who would dare play Arron Banks?” Well, there is famously a lot of unemployment in the acting profession. I think the spokesman underestimates the motivation of a paycheque and the cast-iron guarantee that no one they know is ever going to see this. It’s the creative and cultural equivalent of a South Korean Viagra ad.

But what about the rest of the story? According to an anonymous source who talks exactly like Banks’s comms chap Andy Wigmore: “It naturally descends into farce – but they win against all odds. [Gunster] is then horrified that the British lunatics are sent to help a US reality TV star fight for the presidency. The farce continues and – guess what? – they win and suddenly they are catapulted into the alternative White House to change the world. What could possibly go wrong!”

Off the top of my head: nuclear war and/or the rise of American fascism. But I expect Cumberbatch’ll play it for laughs.