IN York writer-director Mark Herman's follow-up to Brassed Off and Little Voice, teenage odd couple Gerry and Sewell are desperate to join the loony Toon Army. Long truant from school, their Holy Grail is to raise the £1,000 necessary for season tickets to worship at the altar of their Newcastle United heroes.

No more 'tack, no more booze, no more glue, the tearaway tyros (Sunderland newcomers Chris Beattie and Greg McLane) vow to pour everything into their money-making grail trail: be it gathering rag-and-bone scrap; robbing stores and a bank with more bravado than competence; or cheekily pleading to Toon goal god Alan Shearer before nicking his car.

Yet as ever in Herman's comic northern dramas - this time adapted from Jonathan Tulloch's novel The Season Ticket - obstacles stand in the path of these scrapheap boys and their dreams of escape. Gerry's AWOL, alcoholic dad (a roughneck Tim Healy) calls home only to beat up his frail ex-wife (Charlie Hardwick) and belt his son and nick their money; Sewell lives with his hopeless, hapless granddad (a rueful Roy Hudd) and has girlfriend problems; world-weary and petty school teachers have given up on the lippy lads; social workers are equally uncaring and the boys themselves are not always the brightest of operators. Only the A1's Angel of the North provides silent inspiration in their messed-up world.

Comparisons with fellow North Easterner Billy Elliot are as inevitable as another York downpour this sodden week, but it is better to judge Purely Belter against Brassed Off and Little Voice. There isn't the political clout of Herman's mining drama nor the bitterness and cynicism of the Brenda Blethyn and Michael Caine star turns on the Scarborough seafront; without them Herman's now familiar brand of kitchen-sink realism and broad humour gel once more but without the stinging impact of his earlier works.

That said, there is much to enjoy in a good-humoured tale where a self-mocking Alan Shearer and the mysterious Angel of the North vie for top cameo billing; the little and large show of the young leads combines the impish expressiveness of the skinny Beattie with the gloomy comic timing of the big, stoical McLane (and you would never know they support Sunderland and Arsenal respectively); Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie makes a shiny, uplifting debut with his first sound-track; and the North Eastern A-list of Healy, Hardwick, scrap dealer Willie Ross and churlish teacher Kevin Whately all give belting performances.