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Are You Dave Gorman?
- Written by: Dave Gorman, Danny Wallace
- Starring: Dave Gorman, Danny Wallace
- Release Date: 19 Feburary 2007
With a little help from a projector and some agile arithmetic, Dave Gorman brings the search for his namesakes into our homes
Are You Dave Gorman? is the tale of a drunken bet between Dave Gorman and his flatmate Danny to find 54 other Dave Gormans - one for every card in a deck, including the jokers. The comedy lies in the simplicity of the idea and the extreme lengths he goes to to find them and chart his progress. Phonebooks, the internet, car stickers: you name it, he tries it.
Early enquiry turns to obsessive research and analysis as he tries to fulfil the quest without travelling too many "miles per Dave Gorman". Meanwhile, Gorman's mathematical fixation and Danny's skills with a camcorder record details of every meeting.
The initial hilarity wears slightly thin as the viewer is constantly returned to 'the graph', with a waning enthusiasm inversely proportional to Gorman's ever-increasing excitement. Gorman flies to different continents and meets a variety of people with at least one thing in common. But, sometimes he discovers little more than men who don't look their age, or people who read newspapers.
The repetitive nature of his routine (he shows his boarding card on the
overhead projector every time he takes an aeroplane) adds to the amusement
early on, but flags way before the end. This is not helped by the six episode
format of the DVD, which includes soap opera-style recaps at the beginning
of each one. In the last episode, Gorman adopts a slightly aggressive tone
to compel us to share his euphoria for a task we grew bored of a while ago.
As maybe he should.
Simon Jennings
