Joseph Morpurgo: Odessa

Watching found footage of Eighties TV from Texas—a newsflash about a fire, adverts for local stores—most of us could find humour purely in how naff it looks today. But Joseph Morpurgo sees greater potential. By pausing on the faces of cops and shoppers, he conjures up a haywire whodunnit with the feel of Twin Peaks and some of the best lines you’ll hear all month.

Click – the tape freezes on a police officer and Morpurgo adopts her voice. Now she’s Maria, the new sergeant in town. Before her first case, a petroleum plant inferno, she must contend with her good ol’ boy boss. Click – Morpurgo embodies a man’s man with “three ties and two Y-chromosomes” who’s wary of them there feminists. Over at the scene of the crime, nobodies from the newscast get their own backstories, becoming unreliable witnesses and wannabe action heroes, while a diamond salesman is co-opted to be Maria’s silver-tongued squeeze.

The crackle and waw of VHS bleeds into the show’s atmosphere, with its soundtrack of burbling synths. There's an intermission where Morpurgo emerges swamped in tinsel, a beast of pure static, as interference fizzes on screen. His half rap, half assonant, abstract poetry could just be texture, but it looks like he’s invoking a muse.

Odessa is proudly artsy, but there's silliness at its core. We shout meaningless directions at a camera-shy local from one of the ads. A reindeer, just a blur in one frame, gets a life of his own: a traumatic past of captivity to Santa, reimagined as Pacino in Scarface.

Morpurgo, a music journalist by day, will know the work of DJs who mine forgotten tunes for samples, seeking to turn old into new. That is what he's done here, with thrillingly inventive flair.