Starter for 10

Starter for 10 is a comedy drama set in Britain in the mid-1980s. Brian Jackson, a working-class student from Essex, arrives at the University of Bristol on a scholarship, driven by a genuine hunger for knowledge and by years spent watching the television quiz show University Challenge. At university he joins the team preparing for the same competition, and his attention is divided between Alice, a confident blonde classmate, and Rebecca, a politically engaged fellow student. The pressures of student life, romance and the quiz itself pull him in different directions.

The film was directed by Tom Vaughan, the first of the five features listed for him, working from a screenplay by David Nicholls. James McAvoy plays Brian, with Alice Eve and Rebecca Hall as Alice and Rebecca, and Catherine Tate, Dominic Cooper and Benedict Cumberbatch among the supporting cast. It is a British and American co-production involving the BBC, Neal Street Productions and Tom Hanks's Playtone, with Hanks also credited as a producer.

Released in 2006, the film drew a modest worldwide box office of around 2 million dollars. On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from roughly 27,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.4 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes, while critics gave it 6.9 out of 10 across 80 reviews, a warmer response than the audience scores suggest.