The Trip

Boiling 'A Cock and Bull Story' down to its essentials, Michael Winterbottom's latest, edited from six half-hours of TV, sends Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a road trip around the north of England to review restaurants for The Observer. Both are once again riffing on their personas: Brydon is warm and eager to please, Coogan is ambitious but resentful. The melancholy undertone stops things from becoming too self-congratulatory although the plot, such as it is, feels superfluous. The pleasure of watching these two engaging in obsessive one-upmanship, however, remains undiminished.