Mike Bassett: England Manager

Ricky Tomlinson plays Mike Bassett, a lower-league manager unexpectedly handed the England job and immediately drowning in tabloid scandal, dressing-room mutiny and his own incompetence. Steve Barron shoots it as deadpan documentary, every cliché of the international set-up — the hotel-bar tantrums, the press conferences, the tactical fixation on 4-4-2 — played as observed reality. A film that loves English football enough to skewer it without contempt.

• Filmed in fly-on-the-wall documentary style.
• Ricky Tomlinson plays Bassett as a 4-4-2 lifer.
• Features cameos from real football journalists.
• Inspired in part by Graham Taylor's England tenure.
• Spawned a 2005 TV sequel set in Brazilian club football.

• England will be playing four-four-fucking-two.
• I'm telling them. Four-four-two.
• Lucky Mike Bassett. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
• We're a team of nobodies, and I'm the somebody.
• Some say football is life and death. It's much more serious.