Mediocre 'Cemetery Junction' winds up a dead loss

Cemetery Junction (Cert 15, 90 mins, Comedy/Drama/Romance)

Best friends Freddie (Christian Cooke), Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan) have very different outlooks on life.

While Bruce enjoys being cock of his small-town walk and lovable loser Snork is happy to trail in his wake, Freddie dreams of something bigger and better.

So he applies for a job as a door-to-door salesman with Vigilant Life Assurance.

The firm is owned by Mr Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes), the father of old school sweetheart Julie (Felicity Jones), who is now dating the company’s top salesman, Mike Ramsay (Matthew Goode).

As Freddie’s ambitions broaden, the three young men are forced to re-examine their friendship and contemplate whether their paths must diverge.

Cemetery Junction is a disappointingly cosy portrait of 1970s small-town angst.

If screenwriters Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had been asked to pen an episode of the long-running ITV drama Heartbeat, albeit with slightly fruitier language, this would be it.

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