England, 1995. An unnamed narrator sets out from Paddington to meet his gay friend Robinson in Reading, where the latter is earning a precarious living as an English-language teacher. Soon the couple (whom we never see) are enlisted as spies by a mysterious organisation and set out on seven meandering trips over England, in imitation of Daniel Defoe's literary tour of the country. The first trip takes them along the Thames, west and east of London; the second to Oxford, Cambridge, and Bristol; the third to the West Midlands; the fourth to Birmingham and Liverpool; the fifth to Manchester and Hull; the sixth to Scarborough and Whitby; the seventh to Blackpool and Sellafield.

Speaking over images of a wide variety of places, the narrator gives a picaresque account of the couple's uneventful journey, embroidered with historical and philosophical observations on English life. Inexplicably released from their quixotic task, the couple end their journey in Newcastle, where Robinson may or may not find the utopia he has been seeking.

Sight and Sound