The Gravy Train Goes East - Channel 4 Comedy [DVD]

A second, post-glasnost slice of Malcolm Bradbury's The Gravy Train, the breezy satire about sleazy goings-on at the heart of Europe. When the newly independent, freshly post-communist Eastern European enclave of Slaka appoints romantic novelist Katya Princip (Francesca Annis) as president, she pledges to push for entry to the European Union and plunder the fruits of the free market. But can an economy based on tin and beetroot (and tinned beetroot), ever be fit to join the gravy train? The answer may lie in the hapless figure of Hans Joachim Dorfmann (Christopher Waltz), pioneer of glasnost with plums in The Gravy Train, who is whisked back to Brussels to pit his wits against familiar friends and foes, as well as new inscrutable chancers. As Dorfmann tours Slaka with the mysterious Galina Vitali (Cécile Paoli), who tells him about a missing Slakan fortune, it becomes clear that the whole country, from church and academia to the core of government, is rife with corruption. And with flip-flopping business agent Ferenc Plitplov (Roger Lloyd Pack) also circling, Dorfmann and his higher-ups are in ever deeper danger.