Stuck

A salesman and one of his creative staff are on their way to a pitch to the second largest crane manufacturer in Europe when traffic hits and they get stuck in gridlock. Crawling forward, the experienced and uptight Adrian starts to worry even though the younger Simon tries to relax and wait for it to subside.

The final film of the four commissions for BBC4's Tight Spot series pretty much sums up the series by not being hilarious but being well enough written to hold the interest. So it is here where the tight focus and two-hander means that my attention was engaged early on. The script is not hilarious but it is amusing and reasonably realistic throughout. The main problem I did have with it though was that it seemed to bail out once it started to get deeper into the characters whereas really I would liked it to have done more at this point.

Warren's direction is solid considering how tight his location was and he does also draw solid turns from his cast. As writer I would have liked if he had done more with it but for what it is it is engaging enough. Gillespie dominates the script and it is a shame that he isn't given more of a character to work with. Anderson is much simpler; he works well with Gillespie and the two do make the script work pretty well. Overall though, the lack of laughs and the lack of depth perhaps limits how good it can be. It is amusing and well written, although I personally would have liked for it to be more.