Brian and Charles

In the peculiarities of British culture, a place in which harmless eccentricity has historically been gently nurtured (or at least indulged), there is nothing quite as definitionally linked to those green and rain-soaked islands as the boffin. The harebrained inventor, the experimental dabbler in mechanics, the engineer with a mad scheme that probably won't work but is always worth a try. It's an integral part of British identity, and that's exactly what Brian (Earl) aims to be. Happy in his little Welsh village, pulling scrap and junk out of piles of rubbish dumped by fly-tippers, making his gizmos. As he explains to the camera in mockumentary Brian and Charles, he's had some rough times. But, well, you've got to get up in the morning, don't you? And that's what he's been doing, hanging with his friendly rat, Mister Williams, building flying cuckoo clocks, and generally failing.

But the dark side of the boffin is that it's a position insulated by a certain financial comfort, a position in life that the shaggy, muddy, bedraggled Brian certainly does not know. There's a fine line between village eccentric and village idiot, and his diet of cabbage and discounted chocolate from the village store puts him on the mockable side. He's not the only awkward person around: Hazel (Brealey, best known as Molly Hooper, the lovelorn morgue registrar from Sherlock) yearns for him from beneath her hand-knitted woolen hat. But in his awkwardness, Brian finally gets an invention right: Charles Petrescu (Hayward), a robot made of roadside rubbish who quickly becomes his best friend.

The modern multicamera mockumentary comedy seems like it's on its last post-post-post-The Office legs, but in the quirky, silly, and frankly lovely Brian and Charles it wobbles on with giddy excitement. Charmingly expanded from Archer's 2017 short of the same name, Brian and Charles has a homely, handcrafted quality, much like Charles himself. In the history of cinematic robots, Charles may be the most purposefully absurd. Hayward staggers around in a giant cardboard box, under a mannequin head that looks like a 1950s rural community college physics professor, complete with wire-frame glasses, bantering like a small child with Brian. Earl, in turn, plays the inadvertent father of the future as a gravel-voiced and greasy-haired big brother/roommate, in turns delighted and exasperated by Charles' antics and growing independent streak.

In its funny, implausible, and heartwarming depiction of a ramshackle platonic friendship between two oddballs, Brian and Charles creates a complete and immersive world – rainier than, but not that far removed from, Kyle Mooney's equally idiosyncratic and endearing fantasy Brigsby Bear. Both films blossom with an optimism that may almost seem naive, but truly are driven by a belief in the healing power of flaws. Like Charles, we're all made of bits and bobs. It's how other people see us that makes us a whole person.