Starting out on a project like this with the desire not to be offensive must be like boxing with one arm tied behind your back. You will end up losing, and sure enough, The Infidel is simply not funny. Sidestepping the very basis of religion itself, it instead goes for good, old-fashioned fun at the expense of social stereotypes. The Iranian-born comedian Omid Djalili plays Mahmud, a relaxed, not especially devout London Muslim who on the death of his mother discovers that he was in fact born a Jew — real name Solly Shimshillewitz — and was adopted at birth by Muslim parents. Once the initial trauma dies down, he tries to find out more about his real identity, mostly with the help of a Jewish (and, bizarrely, American) London  cab driver. Cue lessons in "Jewish-ness" — syntax, gestures, barmitzvahs and the rest.

The point about Life of Brian is that it went right for the source material. The Infidel, on the other hand, comes from the "It's a funny old world, ain't it?" school of comedy in which our foibles are laughed over in the warm, fuzzy knowledge that more unites than separates us. The truth is we're not really that sure about that now, and it seemed to me, neither is the film. It treads carefully. Most of the humour derives from the funniness of a particular brand of North London Jewishess. Islam is, on the whole, left well alone. There is a send-up of Abu Hamza in the form of a radical with a hook, surrounded by threatening looking heavies. There are young women in burkas dancing. But the religion itself? That, it seems, is no laughing matter.

A word about this year's Oscars: what a relief that that overblown, infantile piece of tosh Avatar was stopped in its tracks, and by a small film, The Hurt Locker, which, by the standards of James Cameron's cartoon epic, has been seen by almost no one. More importantly, the simple-minded anti-Americanism of Avatar was trumped by a film which, whatever its makers' view on the Iraq war, admires and celebrates the bravery of US troops. Such a film is inconceivable here — or anywhere else in Europe for that matter.  

It was not ever thus: Noel Coward did a sterling job in In Which We Serve, admittedly a wartime effort. Even as late as the Sixties, with the star-studded The Battle of Britain, it was possible for audiences here to see a straight-faced tale of heroism where nothing much was called into question. But even then, the heart was already growing feint, and really from Tony Richardson's revisionist take on the Charge of the Light Brigade in that decade it has been downhill all the way. 

Even when they show up in science fiction dramas such as the zombie-fest 28 Days Later, British troops are portrayed as bigoted, psychotic grunts. Our film-makers, it seems, refuse to separate the message from the messenger.