The Fisherman’s Friends team have found a modestly profitable post-Brexit niche: tales of culturally endangered Anglo-Saxon endeavours, nudged towards gentle uplift via a few songs and laughs, dollops of sentiment and some rabble-rousing populism. First it was half-forgotten sea shanties; now it’s the dwindling pub trade, represented here by rival West Country establishments. On one streetcorner, spit-and-sawdust local the Drovers Arms, overseen by salt-of-the-earth (read: emotionally repressed) widower Martin Clunes, who is slowly being strangled by his grasping brewery’s supply chain. On the other, that same brewery’s la-di-da gastropub, owned and somewhat implausibly operated by posho Pritchard (Luke Treadaway).
The scene may have shifted indoors – gone, alas, is the Cornish scenery of Fisherman’s Friends – but the formula remains much the same: clunky exposition, upper-case “Issues”, variably groansome dad gags. Tension emerges between Clunes and prodigal son Jonno Davies, until the latter proposes a radical idea to save the business: homebrewing. Davies has an awkward reunion with old flame Gabriella Wilde, who is now shacked up with Treadaway and doubtless eating swan for breakfast. But the resolutions really are arbitrary: it takes barely 10 minutes for the villager who sabotages the microbrewery to crowdfund its replacement. Co-writer and director Nick Moorcroft must be praying that audience sympathy for rickety, no-frills structures like the Drovers will extend to the film itself.
