A little-seen documentary about the state of British cinema in the 1980s offers a portrait of dark cultural days.

I recently discovered the existence of a documentary from 1986 that was made for Thames Television in the UK and has the intriguing title, A Turnip-Head's Guide to the British Cinema. It’s a somewhat baffling name for a film which professes to offer a serious investigation into the state of the seventh art during the cultural doldrums of the Thatcher era, as one might think it was aimed at children. The only thing preventing me from saying that it may be the worst documentary I’ve seen in my life is that I’ve only actually seen two thirds of it, so official adjudication will have to wait.

It was directed by and stars the late Alan Parker, venerable prankster and silver-tongued golden boy of the British film firmament. As the maker of films such as Midnight Express (1978), Fame (1980) and Angel Heart (1987), Parker was living proof that you could be a kind of mid-Atlantic genre-inspired director whose work could court both the mainstream and the more adult-oriented arthouse set. He famously gave up the ghost in his later years upon the critical and commercial mauling of his 2003 swansong, The Life of David Gale, starring Kevin Spacey. During those years, he receded from public life and was seldom seen engaging with the industry that had more-than paid his bills for the preceding three decades, instead rekindling his formative love of painting.