Swinging in on its own inverted commas, Michael Winterbottom’s meta-comedy crawls inside giant wombs, star vanity, bad teeth and filmmaking itself. It’s a burst of delightful paradoxes. From Laurence Sterne’s unreadable, unfilmable 18th century novel The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Winterbottom and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce construct a movie that’s both hugely watchable and a wily exercise in adaptation. How do they succeed? By embracing their inevitable failure to adapt and creating a clever film that delights in being plain silly.

The narrative pretzel begins as Tristram Shandy futilely attempts to narrate his own life story. Steve Coogan is Tristram. He is also Tristram’s father. And he is also Steve Coogan, the vain, narcissistic actor playing the previous two roles. Keeping up? Packing endless tricks, tics and in-jokes between its layers of reality and fiction, A Cock And Bull Story’s shrewd, affectionate cuffs at star egotism and insecurity come via an incredibly ballsy show from Coogan, ribbing his own reputation for both. He’s also immensely generous to co-star Rob Brydon, who, in a wicked irony, comes close to stealing the movie. Their semi-improv bickering is a treat – off-set bookends see the comedians joust about star billing (“It’s a co-lead”) and the colour of Brydon’s teeth (“Pub ceiling”). In between it’s rarely half as funny, but if Winterbottom’s unruly exercise in postmodern absurdism seems to have been thrown together for fun, it’s probably all the better for it.

The disc is interesting because, as alluded to by Coogan’s character, the film already functions as its own DVD on-set extra; thus the brief Making Of and extended/deleted scenes seem a little redundant. But then comes Coogan and Brydon’s commentary... “You very much expose yourself when you’re doing improvisation,” intones Coogan. “Yes, it’s about trusting the other actor,” agrees Brydon. “There’s even trust involved in doing this commentary. For example, I had no idea until I arrived that we would be doing it naked.” See also the footage from the premiere party... Fast Show co-creator Charlie Higson after a few too many drinks: “When the fuck is Michael fucking Winterbottom going to cast me in one of his fucking films?”

DVD Extras:

Cast commentary
Deleted scenes
Coogan interview with Tony Wilson
Behind-the-scenes footage