Michael Winterbottom directs Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in a beautifully improvised comic road trip through the North of England.

One of the significant pleasures of Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (also starred Claire Keelan) was the fractious, funny relationship between actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Their competitive friendship resurfaces in this feature length treatment of their new BBC series, again directed by Winterbottom, in which they play 'loose versions' of themselves. Coogan is commissioned by The Observer to take a road trip through the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, reviewing some of the regions' most notable restaurants, and asks Brydon to accompany him as a last minute stand in when his girlfriend bails from the tour. Against a backdrop of stunning scenery and equally impressive cuisine, the pair are soon bickering about anything and everything, and whilst Brydon pines for his wife and baby, Coogan copes with the absence of his girlfriend by notching up a series of one night stands. Mostly though they trade impressions and insults (gentle and otherwise), and their matchless improvisations (taking in Michael Caine, Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins amongst others) are a comic delight. That said, there is poignancy and vulnerability here too, and signs of real bravery at work.