COMEDIAN Steve Coogan gave us the cringeworthy TV host Alan Partridge and student-hater Paul Calf.

Now he's spead his wings to bring a new creation to the big screen with the big screen in The Parole Officer.

Coogan and co-writer Henry Normal take that most over-stretched of movie conventions - the botched bank heist - as the inspiration for their debut big-screen feature.

Hapless probation officer Simon Garden (Coogan) witnesses corrupt cop DI Burton (Stephen Dillane) murdering his partner in a lucrative cocaine scam.

Exposed as the one witness to the crime, Simon goes on the run. In his panic, he drops his wallet, which Burton then uses to frame the parole officer for the murder.

By chance, the horrifying events are captured on CCTV. Burton hastily acquires the incriminating video and locks the cassette in a bank vault.

Determined to clear his good name and put Burton behind bars, Simon contacts his three rehabilitated clients - serial bigamist George (Om Puri), computer hacker Colin (Ben Miller) and former boxer Jeff (Steven Waddington) - and persuades them to help him rob the bank.

Coogan says he was determined not to tread a familiar path by making the central character obnoxious.

"I wanted to do someone who is sort of quite nice," he has said.

"Virtually all the characters I've done have been not very nice people. So that was the challenge and for 90 minutes it's very difficult to do a character you can empathise with.

"I wanted to do a character who is much closer to me, there are no wigs or moustache. I wanted to do something different.

"I was trying to do something more like Ealing comedy, which gives you a gentle kind of tempo but with a character you cared enough to want to know what happens next. It works as long as you don't think too much about it."