This great little film launched the career of Richard E Grant and has since developed into a cult classic. Grant and Paul McGann play two dissolute out-of-work actors in 1960s London, slowly unravelling under the pressures of obscurity and determined substance abuse. Tiring of the baroque squalor of their Camden flat, the drink- and drugs-sodden pair decamp to a cottage in the Lake District ("We've gone on holiday by mistake") where they struggle to survive the weather and the lecherous Uncle Monty (the wonderful Richard Griffiths). Hilarious and poignant, this was written and directed by Bruce Robinson (who wrote the screenplay for The Killing Fields), based on his own experiences as a struggling actor.