Released by the BBC in 2009, Micro Men is an affectionate, comedy-drama that chronicles the real-life 1980s battle for the British home computer market. It explicitly highlights the fierce rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair (played by Alexander Armstrong) and Chris Curry (played by Martin Freeman), the founder of Acorn Computers.
After spending the last week breathing in solder fumes and miraculously resurrecting a dead ZX Spectrum from a 24V reverse-polarity disaster, I needed something to watch while the glue dried. Naturally, I booted up the BBC’s 2009 comedy-drama, Micro Men.
If you have ever lost your mind over a faulty capacitor or felt the supreme rush of getting a 40-year-old computer to boot into a prompt, this film is your holy grail.
Here is my official breakdown of the highs and lows of this British tech classic.
The Rants
- Clive’s Stubborn Blindness: Martin Freeman (Chris Curry) and Alexander Armstrong (Sir Clive Sinclair) play off each other beautifully, but watching Sinclair’s real-life, pig-headed refusal to listen to his engineers will make you want to scream at the screen.
- The Rubber Keyboard Insult: The movie ruthlessly mocks the Speccy’s rubber “dead flesh” membrane keyboard. As someone who just spent days refurbishing one, it hurt a little—even if it is totally accurate!
- The Heartbreaking Sinclair C5 Pivot: Watching Sinclair abandon the computing throne to pour his fortune into the ill-fated C5 electric tricycle is like watching a slow-motion car crash.
The Raves
- The “Blind Bulgarian Bricklayer” Line: Alexander Armstrong delivers some of the most hilarious, biting insults in tech history. His rant calling the rival BBC Micro a chunky piece of crap designed by a bricklayer is pure gold.
- Authentic Workbench Chaos: The film perfectly captures the stressful, chaotic reality of 1980s hardware engineering—rushing prototypes to trade shows with uncompiled code and prayer. It made me feel much better about my own recent workbench mishaps!
- Pure Retro Nostalgia: From the synth-heavy soundtrack to the sight of kids loading games from cassette tapes in their bedrooms, the atmosphere is an absolute love letter to the UK computer boom.
The Verdict 10/10
Micro Men isn’t just a movie about computers; it’s a movie about the fragile, obsessive egos that built the modern world. Having just witnessed the near-indestructible nature of the Spectrum’s lower RAM in my own lab, watching the chaotic birthplace of these machines made me appreciate my little “Speccy” even more.