Clockwise Details

In this madcap comedy, John Cleese plays a headmaster with a mania for punctuality who has to travel to Norwich for a conference. Unfortunately, he boards the wrong train, resulting in an increasingly frenzied cross-country dash with a schoolgirl and a former girlfriend in tow. Cleese finds it difficult to be unfunny, and he unravels here much like Basil Fawlty, from a simmering starting point to a climax of epic proportions. Perhaps because of Cleese's background in TV comedy, the picture, written by Michael Frayn, is less a narrative than a series of sketches, plus some rather awkwardly placed propaganda about public and private education in that far-off land called Mrs Thatcher's Britain. Cleese refined his cinema technique two years later with A Fish Called Wanda and this film doesn't stand comparison, but it still makes for entertaining late-night fare.

Clock-watching comprehensive headmaster Mr Stimpson (Cleese) momentarily boards the wrong train when he sets out for a... read more on Time Out