Mischief Night

In Leeds, where Penny Woolcock shot this big-screen follow-up to her Channel 4 successes ‘Tina Goes Shopping’ (1999) and ‘Tina Takes A Break’ (2001), Mischief Night is an annual institution, a sort of trick-or-treat night without the treats. As a period of licensed outrages in which the world is turned upside down, it forms an apt backdrop to this carnivalesque outing about the upending of social expectations, but the result feels like too little spread much too thin. Woolcock regular Kelli Hollis reprises her role as Tina, single mum to a couple of unruly kids, here seen renewing her friendship with old schoolmate Ramon Tikaram, who has family troubles of his own. Meanwhile, two young teenage girls – one white, one Asian – are trying to strike out, Tina’s gangster dad is up to all sorts and a rabble-rousing imam and predatory paedophile are on the loose to boot. Although the film engages interestingly with the increasing racial ghettoisation of its setting, it tries to cram in enough interconnected plots for a TV series. Unfortunately, ‘Shameless’ has already done it, and better.