Extremely light piece of escapist fluff produced for Britain's ITV has five men driving from England to France in search of cheap booze.

Martin Clunes headlines, but his role as snobbish Clive (portly, slow-minded, and sporting a prickly moustache) is no greater than his co-stars, which include Ben Wishaw as Daniel, Clive's future and increasingly tenuous son-in-law; Mark Benton as easygoing Dave, who pilots the sedan and its small trailer heaped with booze; Neil Pearson as Rob, the smart-mouthed brute who dislikes all the new people (particularly Clive, who commandeers the front passenger seat); and Brain Murphy as complainer Maurice, who loathes all things ‘froggy.'

Brian Leveson and Paul Minnett's teleplay is both amiable and naughty, assigning the most acidic barbs to Rob who never fails to heap low blows to Clive and elder Maurice. The connection among the characters lies in their urban locales, and fans of bickering next door and backyard neighbours will find the script refreshing for extracting five characters, packing them into a car, and letting their biases and complaints explode at each stage of their journey to and from France, while their wives stay home and enjoy a day free from whiny husbandry.

The female characters are highly clichéd, and only Karen Henthorn as Dave's wife Cath comes off as the least archetypal; among the ladies' own issues with each other and their own personal dramas, Cath functions as a minor support mechanism, assisting Clive's wife Ruth (Marsha Fitzalan) when idyllic plans for her daughter's wedding go kaplooey.

Jim Parker's score maniacally revisits his main theme and nothing else, and while the variations are appropriately loony (the main version bordering on rustic French/screaming Yiddish) they're heavily overused by director Paul Seed, who apparently felt secondary themes and further variations might have been too challenging for boob tube viewers.

Daniel's love interest in a local French girl is completely absurd, as is the sudden love collision of bride-to-be Chloe (Louise Callaghan), who indulges quite rapidly in some afternoon hob-knobbing with a videographer, but their group's escapades are tight plot turns that certainly leave the door open for future installments, of which there were two: The Booze Cruise proved to be sufficiently successful that ITV furthered the group's adventures (minus Clunes, who had begun Doc Martin) in two sequels, Booze Cruise II: The Treasure Hunt (2005), and Booze Cruise III: The Scattering (2006) before the co-writers moved on as contributing writers for the BBC's My Family series.

The Booze Cruise trio are available in widescreen (1.85:1) on Region 2 DVDs, whereas the Region 1 edition from BFS is apparently fullscreen (1.33:1), and each teleplay has been clunkily re-branded Cheers and Tears.

© 2008 Mark R. Hasan