Since the fudge of last year's Copenhagen summit, however, it's as if exasperated artists have decided to wedge climate change into their work by any means necessary. Banksy, of course, was the cutest. A few weeks ago, the Bristol graffiti artist scrawled I Don't Believe in Global Warming along the side of a canal, with the words half submerged, as if by rising water. Not his subtlest work, but points for the retro use of the original 1970s term. Ian McEwan, meanwhile, has based his next novel, Solar — out on March 18 — on a devious, woman-chasing physicist called Michael Beard, who discovers a way to derive power from a form of artificial photosynthesis, but seems happier lurching around ice-bound ships while wildly drunk. Beard faces violent attacks from the media as he staggers across the planet.

This month, however, it's Helen Baxendale's turn, with an altogether more cheerful Britcom called Beyond the Pole. The Friends and Cold Feet actress has produced — and really produced, not just taken an executive producer's credit — this offbeat script based on a Radio 4 comedy about two hapless Brits trying to reach the North Pole. The film weaves their faltering bromance with a whiteout road movie, competitive Norwegians, a collapsing home life and a vague but heartfelt desire to raise awareness about climate change.

Stephen Mangan plays Mark, a neurotic, self-obsessed failure who devises the first carbon-neutral, vegetarian, organic expedition ever to attempt the North Pole as his marriage crumbles and his job disappears, while Rhys Thomas plays his mate Brian, who quite fancies getting into the Guinness Book of Records.

"Mark's an idealist," Mangan explains. "He's a bit of a fanatic, I guess, but that's because he's so angry at his marriage collapsing, and he channels it all into this trip. Him trudging across the frozen ice in silence makes him more and more unstable. He's probably going through one long nervous breakdown. But funny."

Mark and Brian's trip is, of course, Sellotaped together. They borrow stuff, get a local camping shop to sponsor them with a couple of skis and a hat or two, and avoid high-tech communications in favour of occasional CB radio contact with their mate Graham (Mark Benton) — a man who likes his chips, has little interest in personal hygiene and lives in a caravan. When they finally meet their Norwegian rivals, played by Lars-Arentz Hansen and the True Blood/Generation Kill heart-throb Alexander Skarsgard — the paucity of their preparation is manifest. The two blond Ubermenschen tower before them, with sport sleds and ski suits, looking like Arctic Terminators, making failure all but inevitable. It's about as apt a national self-image as our cinema has created recently.

"It's about something very British — the underdog striving for something, with lots of self-deprecation and humour," Baxendale explains when we meet, leaning earnestly forward and running her hands across the table in front of her. Her husband — the film's director, David Williams — is waiting downstairs. "We want to make films that mean something to us and have some basis in the life we understand. I don't think the story of most people in Britain gets told very often — in film, anyway. We mainly seem to make gangster and zombie films. I think this film is a representation of a part of British life that we both come from. It's average. It's not gangsters or sink estates or posh weddings. We're just average people who try things and fail." She stops, grimaces, giggles and collects herself. "Who try to achieve things and fail and succeed."

She explains why she fumbled — this film very nearly didn't get made. The couple — who set up their own pro­duction company, Shooting Pictures, 10 years ago, at the height of Baxendale's Friends fame — optioned the script in 2003, rewrote and rewrote, then took it out for funding and found almost no interest at all.

"Everyone said maybe, but nobody said yes," she shrugs. "We were in a hurry. We wanted to get it out last year, because green issues were so relevant at that point, and at the time it seemed that something might happen. We thought, 'They'll sort it out in Copenhagen, so we've got to get the film out in case it's like the ozone layer and they sort it out.'" She laughs drily. "Which, of course, they didn't."

With private backing and much of their own money, they finally shot the film — stumping up for locations on the Arctic ice off Greenland, which adds an immense and un-British scale to the polar shots. "We may not have sets at Pinewood, but we've got the North Pole," she says proudly. "We had our friends and a local amateur-dramatics group as extras, we had to borrow a friend's house and 4WDs." She laughs. "It's about that British tradition of taking the Heath Robinson approach to life, and it's appropriate it's made that way itself."

There's an equally appropriate irony in the reason this low-budget flick with a tiny distributor and zero marketing budget is on the verge of becoming a hit in America — the pecs and abs of Alex Skarsgard. Between filming Pole and its release, the then unknown Swede stormed the screens in Generation Kill, but most particularly as the sensual, dark vampire Eric in True Blood.

"A lot of the way this is getting out is through the internet, and through Facebook," Baxendale says. "Alex has this incredible, really loyal fan base — they are amazing. It's this huge group of women who are so into him, they're pushing for the film to be shown in every cinema in America. They've made little videos about it off their own back and posted them online, saying, 'Come on, we need 10,000 fans, let's do it for Alex and the film.'" She shakes her head. "There's a certain amount of people power gone into this."

So it's the Scandinavians who are helping out the Brits — just as Mark and Brian's cobbled-together quest ultimately relies on their rivals' expedition to make it through. It's in the spirit of the film's other great reference, Scott of the Antarctic and the wily Amundsen, where we find the myth of the gentleman amateur incarnate: plucky Captain Scott, noble Captain Oates and the slightly naughty foreigner who spoiled their fun.

In fact, of course, it was Scott's expedition that was state-of-the-art, with the latest windproof clothing, a complex theodolite navigation device and three motorised sledges (he spent seven times more on the motorised sledges than on dogs and horses combined, but they broke down early on, as Scott wouldn't let the engineer who built them join the expedition because of his inferior rank). Amundsen, on the other hand, was trying to make a mark for his newborn nation with no budget, so learnt from the Inuit, using skis, fur clothing and a simple sextant.

It's curious how the humble, self-deprecating Brit of myth has found a way into the heart of our modern story — we bumble, fail, stagger on and somehow win Julia Roberts, or invent lying, or beat the bully. Then again, with the UK's leading climate-change scientist on the rack for fumbling data, and the University of East Anglia's computers open to any casual hacker, perhaps that is the best we can hope for. Perhaps we've realised we will never save the world.

Beyond the Pole is showing at the ICA, SW1, from Friday until February 28, and at selected independent cinemas nationwide; beyondthepole.com

If you are not familiar with Gary Bellamy you soon will be. The radio DJ makes his television debut in Bellamy's People, in which he travels the UK exploring what it means to be British. Not unlike umpteen other celeb-umentaries, from Martin Clunes island-hopping to Griff Rhys Jones pootling down rivers.

Except that Bellamy's People is a spoof, created by and co-starring Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson from The Fast Show. The benignly ignorant Bellamy first appeared in 2006 on the brilliantly convincing Down the Line on Radio 4, taking calls from the public, who turned out to be various comedians pretending to be bigots. It was such an accurate parody that some listeners complained about dumbing down. Eventually the makers came clean and the show was garlanded with prizes, including a Sony Award for Best Radio Comedy.

The television reboot may not fool people quite as easily, but what it lacks in subterfuge it more than makes up for in social satire as each week Bellamy meets the range of recurring characters, played by Whitehouse, Higson and others, to ask them about their views on such subjects as history, religion and the Royal Family.

"It was a format that we felt had not been sent up," Higson says during a break. There are 163 characters, from the overweight mummy's boy Graham Downes to the ex-con Tony Beckton, although only about 50 may make the edit.

Bellamy, played by Rhys Thomas, will inevitably be compared with Alan Partridge, who also started on radio. Higson admits to a degree of initial overlap: "There is a certain type that does local radio, who is desperate for anyone to call and mustn't be rude to them. The difference with Bellamy is that he hasn't got Partridge's evil streak."

"He also isn't seduced by showbiz tinsel," adds Whitehouse, who has just arrived. "He isn't so self-obsessed. He lets other characters speak, which is important."

While Bellamy is about to become part of the showbiz furniture, Whitehouse and Higson, both 51, are already well-worn armchairs, with success stretching from writing Loadsamoney for Harry Enfield to the ground-breaking Fast Show. Higson has developed a useful sideline writing novels, most notably the young James Bond books, while Whitehouse is about to start work on his next series with Enfield, Harry & Paul.

Yet Bellamy's People came about almost by accident. They recorded the radio series in a cheap local studio, and its success meant that television inevitably came calling. They knew they could not transfer the phone-in, but once they had hatched the docuspoof conceit they did not take much persuading. "Once we came up with a stable of characters we were genuinely excited about the idea," reflects Higson, who is the laid-back foil to Whitehouse's blokey gagsmith.

Bellamy's People could be seen as smuggling The Fast Show back by stealth. The pace is gentler but there are quickfire jokes and the odd catchphrase. Whitehouse's wide-boy decorator Martin Hole (the writer's own trade before comedy paid) is always saying "done you up like a kipper". "It's not catchphrase-based, though," Whitehouse argues. "It's about real subjects. We couldn't have done that before; we couldn't have gone: 'Ooh, religion, suit you sir.' " "We like character comedy," Higson concedes. "The connection is just Paul and me." And, it should be said, Thomas, who did work experience on The Fast Show. And Simon Day, who does a brilliantly wry turn as the husband of the demented woman who runs Bellamy's fan club. The style is more improvised. One scene features ageing, Mitfordish sisters, one a Nazi, one a communist. The camera keeps rolling, gradually exposing their love-hate relationship. A self-appointed Asian community leader, played by Adil Ray, interacts with real shoppers, who start treating him as if he really is their community leader. The fictional characters take on a life of their own.

It could be seen as part of the realism line stretching from The Office to The Thick of It. They get laughs by playing it straight, Whitehouse says. The show even features a character who bemoans how you can't say "golliwog" any more, and has certainly not been neutered in the BBC's more anxious climate after the Sachs-Ross-Brand controversy. "It's intelligent," Higson explains. "Not trying to go 'the Pope is a w***er'. We leave that to Frankie Boyle."

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