Non-Alan Steve Coogan films, series, etc

[SteveCooganFan]

The Penguin Lessons trailer (2025)

[Miguel Wilkins]

'The Penguin Lessons'
Steve Coogan Makes a Feathered Friend in Sweet British Buddy Dramedy
Frank Scheck
hollywoodreporter.com
March 25, 2025

There are two things that can make any movie better: Steve Coogan and penguins. Fortunately, and not surprisingly considering its title, The Penguin Lessons features both. Well, at least one penguin, who goes by the name Juan Salvador. But he's more than enough. He's Coogan's best onscreen partner since Rob Brydon in the Trip movies. Loosely based on a memoir by Tom Michell, the film takes place in 1976 in Buenos Aires, where teacher Tom (Coogan) arrives to teach English to teenage students at a tony private school. His timing wasn't exactly fortuitous, as not long after he gets there the country is rocked by a military coup, with people disappearing subsequently.

Not that any of the tumult affects Tom, who soon embarks on a weekend getaway to Uruguay with his Swedish colleague (Bjorn Gustafsson, priceless), where he enjoys a flirtation with a local woman. Walking together on the beach, they encounter an oil slick and the bodies of several dead penguins. One, however, is still alive. Tom is eager to move on. "There's nothing we can do," he says with mock solemnity. "You can't interfere with nature."

But she implores him to help, and Tom, trying to impress her, agrees to take the penguin back to his hotel room and clean him up. Not only does this attempt at seduction not work, but Tom finds himself stuck with a penguin that won't leave him, even after he throws him back into the ocean. In one of the film's many implausibilities that you just have to go with, he smuggles the bird to Argentina and hides him in his on-campus apartment to avoid the watchful eyes of the school's officious headmaster (Jonathan Pryce).

It's not hard to guess what happens next. Tom, whose cynicism has already been well established, finds himself warming up to the adorable Magellanic penguin (I cop to knowing this from the press notes), working hard to procure fish to feed him and even bringing him to the classroom as a teaching aide. Which naturally does wonders for his bored students, who take a renewed interest in their lessons. And for Tom himself, who previously snuck off for naps during classes but now finds himself teaching with fresh vigor.

The trailer for The Penguin Lessons makes it look like a cutesy comedy, something that might have easily been called "The Dead Penguin's Society." The film is that, to a large degree. But it also attempts something more ambitious with a major plot element involving the disappearance of Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio), the granddaughter of school housekeeper Maria (Vivian El Jaber), seized off the street by government figures right in front of Tom, who's too terrified to intervene.

We eventually learn the reason for Tom's hard-boiled indifference, involving a tragic incident from his past. With his appreciation for life newly restored by his feathered friend, he soon finds himself in the unlikely position of political activist, using Juan Salvador to strike up a conversation with one of the men who took Sofia and winding up spending a night in jail, beaten up for his troubles.

The film doesn't fully succeed in blending its disparate tones, but under the careful direction of Peter Cattaneo (an old hand at this sort of feel-good material, thanks to such previous efforts as The Full Monty and Military Wives), it emerges as an engaging delight from start to finish. That's partially thanks to the canny screenplay by frequent Coogan collaborator Jeff Pope (Philomena, Stan & Ollie) and partially, no make that majorly, to the superb performance by Coogan, whose expert deadpan comic timing and delivery make the film laugh-out-loud funny at times.

The Penguin Lessons also proves unexpectedly moving, its emotional manipulations fully forgivable. By the time it ends with home-movie footage of the real-life Juan Salvador happily swimming in the school's pool, you'll have fully succumbed to its charms.

[SteveCooganFan]

Director Peter Cattaneo speaks with Variety about his new film, 'The Penguin Lessons' (2025)

Pics from @jhoffman.bsky.social‬

[SteveCooganFan]

Steve Coogan and Charlotte Ritchie join crime drama 'Legends'

Steve Coogan and Ghosts star Charlotte Ritchie have joined the cast of a new Netflix series based on a real-life undercover customs operation.

Legends will also feature Strike star  Tom Burke and  I, Daniel Blake's Hayley Squires and revolves around an audacious plan to infiltrate Britain's most dangerous drug gangs in the 1990s.

The six-part series has been written by Neil Forsyth, who created The Gold for the BBC about a different heist, and which starred Dominic Cooper and Jack Lowden. 

Forsyth previously created the comedy character Bob Servant, as played by  Brian Cox, and  penned Eric, Ernie and Me, a one-off drama about Morecambe and Wise from the point of view of their writer Eddie Braben.

The Netflix logline for the show reads: 'In the early '90s, her Majesty's Customs and Excise was losing its battle with illegal drug smuggling across Britain's borders. The solution was extraordinary. In a top-secret operation, a small team of Customs employees were sent undercover. Their task — to infiltrate Britain's most dangerous drug gangs.

'But these were not trained spies. They were normal men and women, plucked from ordinary lives around the UK, put through a basic training regime, and tasked with building new identities in the criminal underworld. These identities were called legends.'

Legends does not yet have a release date.


Published: 19 Mar 2025
Via Chortle