The Strike

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This article is about the Comic Strip film. For the Seinfeld episode, see The Strike (Seinfeld episode).

The Strike (also known as Strike!) was one of the long-running series of Comic Strip Presents... short comedy films, written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens and directed by Richardson. First aired on Channel 4 in September 1988, it also received a limited theatrical release, and won the Golden Rose of Montreux for the same year.

The film concerns Paul (Alexei Sayle), a Welsh former miner and aspiring screenwriter who writes a hard-hitting film about his own experiences of the 1984 Miners' Strike. However, the Hollywood production company that gets hold of his script turns it into an anachronistic, sensationalist action film, starring Al Pacino (played by Richardson) as Arthur Scargill, and Meryl Streep (Jennifer Saunders) as his wife. The film also stars Robbie Coltrane, Nigel Planer and Keith Allen (all of whom play multiple roles), in addition to fleeting appearances from most of the regular Comic Strip performers, including Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall and Dawn French.

Due to its cinema release, prestigious award success and subject matter, The Strike is one of the most famous of all the Comic Strip films. In addition, the film's theme (of a Hollywood studio creating a warped version of a British historical event) and its chief stylistic device (intercutting the narrative concerning the making of the film-within-a-film with "footage" from it) would be revisited twice by Richardson and Richens: first in the later Comic Strip film GLC: The Carnage Continues..., and then in the movie Churchill: The Hollywood Years. Neither of these films, however, achieved success comparable to The Strike.