Comfort and Joy (1984) on Netflix
Days before Christmas, Glasgow radio host Alan Bird's girlfriend Maddy announces she is moving out. Driving to clear his head, he sees masked men attack an ice cream van with baseball bats.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.6/102,641 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Plot summary
Alan Bird is a disc jockey on a Glasgow radio station, known to his listeners as Dicky. Days before Christmas, Maddy, the girlfriend he has lived with for four years, tells him she is leaving, and his friend Colin tries to lift his spirits. On a drive to distract himself, Bird notices a girl named Charlotte serving from a Mr. Bunny van and follows it. Two masked men pull up and batter the vehicle with baseball bats, while the people inside fight back with squirts of raspberry essence. One of the attackers recognizes the radio host and asks for an autograph. The incident draws Bird into the rivalry between two Scottish-Italian ice cream families, headed by the young Trevor and the older Mr. McCool, and he is caught between them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Comfort and Joy (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bill Forsyth built the film on stories Peter Capaldi, who came from an ice cream family, told him about Glasgow's ice cream wars, a rivalry Capaldi framed as being over whose ice cream tasted best. In reality the Glasgow ice cream wars were fought between violent gangs who used the vans as a front for dealing drugs.
- Bill Paterson said the ending was never quite right: an earlier ending that tied up Dickie with Clare Grogan's character had not been properly resolved, so they shot a different one.
- Bill Paterson recalled shooting Comfort and Joy in Glasgow in November and December: even when the weather was good the light was gone by 5 o'clock, and with a daytime story there were few hours to shoot, so the crew were always chasing the light on exteriors.
