Coast to Coast

Coast to Coast is a 1987 comedy thriller starring Lenny Henry, John Shea, with support from Peter Vaughan, Pete Postlethwaite, Cherie Lunghi ,Edward Peel,Tony Haygarth,Bobby Knutt and Al Matthews. It was directed by Sandy Johnson from a script by Stan Hey. It featured a soundtrack of classic Motown tracks. It was originally screened as part of BBC2's Screen Two strand in January 1987. The film had its to-date only cinema screening at BFI Southbank, in December 2016 as part of the BFI's retrospective of Henry's career. Plot White American soul fan John Carloff (John Shea) arrives in Liverpool on a tourist coach: he's there to answer a help ad placed by black Liverpudlian Ritchie Lee (Lenny Henry) regarding setting up a mobile soul disco. Both unemployed, they nonetheless both have something to offer: John has a five-foot-high stack of original soul singles, and Ritchie has disco equipment plus an old ice cream van which has been converted into what he describes as "the Popemobile with attitude." Although the duo bond over the music and the sense of adventure, things start off badly after they are mistakenly booked for a geriatrics evening entertainment (Ritchie: “How was I supposed to know? The bloke just asked if we were a '60s disco...”) Despite hoping that their next booking will be at "a posh house party in a Wirral mansion", it turns out to be a wedding reception in a Kirkby pub. Ritchie predicts trouble ("a wedding reception in Kirkby is a disaster! There's always some knobhead going through your records... and there's always a fight!”) but the pair turn up. As Ritchie predicts, the reception degenerates into a huge punch-up, and as John and Richie make their getaway, the van breaks down.