Coast to Coast
Coast to Coast is a 1987 comedy thriller starring Lenny Henry, John Shea, with support from Peter Vaughan, Pete Postlethwaite, Cherie Lunghi and Al Matthews. It was directed by Sandy Johnson from a script by Stan Hey. It featured a soundtrack of classic Motown tracks. It was originally screened as part of BBC2's Screen Two strand in January 1987. The film had its to-date only cinema screening at BFI Southbank, in December 2016 as part of the BFI's retrospective of Henry's career.
Plot
White American soul fan John Carloff (John Shea) arrives in Liverpool on a tourist coach: he's there to answer a help ad placed by black Liverpudlian Ritchie Lee (Lenny Henry) regarding setting up a mobile soul disco. Both unemployed, they nonetheless both have something to offer: John has a five-foot-high stack of original soul singles, and Ritchie has disco equipment plus an old ice cream van which has been converted into what he describes as "the Popemobile with attitude."