Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown is a short comedy film made by The Comic Strip for the BBC, first broadcast in the UK in 1993.

Plot

The film opens on the studio set of a fictional 1990s TV show, The Gourmet Detective. This is depicted as a crass cross-genre detective/cookery series ("two recipes and one murder per show"), whose lead character (played by Keith Allen) presents his recipe in a style that parodies Keith Floyd. Allen's "on-screen" Gourmet Detective character is the epitome of politically correct "new man" compassion, but the actor "off-screen" is shown to be an obnoxious, drug-taking womaniser. He is subsequently murdered – the second TV detective to be killed in six months – and the rest of the film involves the search for his assassin.