Blue Tunes

Grouchy Leonard Blue runs a record shop with halfwit moustachioed assistant Danny. When they team up with neurotic neighbour Pam, things become a riot of laughs.

I’m coming up to 200 different designs and this is the first one with any level of photographic imagery. And it’s kind of inevitable for what I want to achieve. And that is: a film poster. Hopefully that’s obvious. ‘Blue Tunes’ – as you can probably surmise from the quote – is a parody of Black Books itself, swapping in Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Minnie Driver for our three British Isles heroes. I’m unsure who plays Leonard / Bernard, but would assume it to be Affleck, as he always seemed the dominant force in the Ben / Matt coupling. Well, he’s taller, at least. As far-fetched as it all sounds, Driver actually appeared in related works, notably as Bulgarian tennis player Mila Milandrovicz in the pilot episode of The Day Today and trans Playboy agony aunt Daniella Forrest in Knowing Me, Knowing You. The latter of which’s ensuing scenes miiiiight not have stood the test of time, if we’re being honest.

Given that the show was first broadcast in the year 2000 (the precise release date being at the foot of the poster, fact fans) I immediately thought of the film High Fidelity. Whether or not the writers had this thought process I don’t know, but a comedy film set in a record shop seemed to fit perfectly. So rather than nine John Cusacks, you get three each of our Hollywood stars.

That aside, there’s the title of the film written in the Black Books logo font and a whole load of abject insanity in the small print at the bottom, roughly relating to the show as a whole. Bill Bailey as composer, Omid Djalili as director of photography and Julian Rhind-Tutt as location manager should make sense to any true fan of the show. Then I lose it a bit and just start piling names in for the fuck of it. Why not, hey?

I’d have to say, though – I probably would not go and see this film. Replace either (preferably both) of the lads with Jack Black and I’m in.