Very few people know more about Ken Loach than me. Not only was the master of socially realistic misery an integral part of both my college and undergraduate days but I even got the opportunity to meet the old man himself a few years ago.

So as I settled down alone with some olives and chorizo from some unpronounceable hamlet in northern Spain into my cinema seat (this is the famous Electric Cinema in Birmingham, no popcorn here) I wondered why despite offering to pay I hadn’t managed to persuade anyone to come with me. The other patrons brayed, hawed and sprayed mid-priced wine around me and not for the first time it dawned on me that the very people Loach is interested in would much rather go see the upcoming Baywatch movie.

I, Daniel Blake is apparently not one of Iain Duncan Smith’s favourite films. I can live with that.

There’s a formula to Loach’s work. It’s a formula he’s been operating since the 1960s and he shows no sign of tweaking it even slightly.

• Open the Guardian to see what social issue is currently troubling the nation
• • Obtain map of United Kingdom (or Nicaragua in one case when he was feeling he deserved a break)
• • Stick pin in map of United Kingdom, ensuring you aim well above the South-East.
• • Call casting and ask for the actor with the most impenetrable accent and hang dog expression from the location your pin has landed
• • Call Paul Laverty and ask him to knock up a script by tomorrow
• • Get onto France & Belgium for funding as unlike the new Baywatch movie you don’t have the readies for a major motion picture, despite having been making them for over fifty years.
• Sometimes it works. Peter Mullan in My Name is Joe was riveting, from miserable beginning to miserable end.
• I, Daniel Blake unfortunately isn’t and it doesn’t. To be successful a Loach masterpiece needs to have a character you can sympathise with (because really, he or she is going to suffer!)
• Dave Johns plays the title role of Daniel Blake, a Geordie joiner who prior to the film start has had a heart attack and finds himself facing the well-publicised nightmare of the benefits system.
• An early scene has Blake asking the assessment officer if she is medically qualified leading to a clunking and lengthy lecture. (She isn’t by the way, but you already knew this)
• We’re introduced to ‘China’ (Kema Sikazwe) who seems to serve no purpose whatsoever other than to hand Blake a box and be sworn at.
• Somewhere along the way Hayley Squires arrives as Katie accompanied by her young son and daughter. Another incredibly long monologue reveals she is from London, has been in a homeless hostel (tick homelessness off the list) but has been rehoused in Newcastle for no apparent reason. One thing in favour of Squires though is, she can act! Despite a boring plodding script her performance is convincing, which is more than can be said for the little girl playing her daughter who seems to be reading her lines off the back of Dave John’s head for most of her mercifully brief appearances.
• Naturally Katie also has to have her share of woe and finds herself sanctioned and shoplifting sanitary items following a lengthy foodbank scene in which Loach seems to take a bizarre interest in an onion (or perhaps the camera crew had gone for lunch and left the camera trained on the vegetable rack)
• Following her failed attempt at theft, help comes in the form of ‘Ivan’ a security guard, who just happens to have a job for her. Yes, you guessed it about ten minutes ago. Katie heads off to the local brothel.
• Meanwhile over in the council offices Blake is filling in his benefit forms online. We’re introduced to the concept that he doesn’t know how to use a mouse. Ten minutes or so later, he still doesn’t know how to use a mouse. His computer time runs out leading to a frozen screen and one of the few well delivered lines of the film. “Well can you defrost it?”
• These prolonged scenes really affect the narrative of I, Daniel Blake. You find yourself screaming “Just get ON WITH IT!!!” at the screen as the jobcentre training officer informs us that ‘1300 people applied for 8 Costa Coffee jobs’ There’s a brief stab at humour here as our hero makes a weak joke about bad coffee. (Did Loach get overcharged on his morning caffeine run on his way to the set?)
• We’re reminded occasionally that Blake still has a weak heart, and anyone with a passing knowledge of Ken’s work is already mentally locating the defibrillator)
• Back at the brothel Katie has been abducted by aliens. (Sorry)
• Katie is dismayed to find Daniel Blake is her next client (yes, really) and he delivers a horrified lecture to her before wandering off to his jobcentre appointment where he tells the advisor that “all it does is grind me down” (we know Daniel…)
• The advisor urges him to comply so he goes out and spray-paints the wall, getting arrested along with a Scottish tramp.
• Another long and cheap scene later finds him at his sanction appeal being advised that “You’re gonna win this Dan” to which he promptly has the heart attack we all knew was coming and drops dead.
• The worst, clunkiest line of the entire film heralds a drawn out funeral speech by Katie seemingly having forgotten she is hungry, penniless and a prostitute.
• “They call this a pauper funeral because it’s the cheapest slot at 09:00”
• No one actually speaks like this! The majority of Paul Laverty’s dialogue in other work is convincing. Ken’s directing is generally top notch. Someone clearly took their eye off the ball here-or possibly the onion.
• Strangely, I, Daniel Blake has become Loach’s biggest box office hit, scoring both him and Laverty a BAFTA.
• I think I’ve decided to become a Tory.