Poles, I am reliably informed, have an expression for something supposedly amusing which they don’t understand — “like in a Czech comedy”.

And I was suitably perplexed after watching Czech offering ‘Rail Yard Blues’ which seemingly hit the buffers on the way to tickling my funnybone.

It follows the personal and professional ups and downs of a group of employees at a railway station over one week in July.

Much of the confusing plot seems to revolve around dispatcher Ales, who for some reason, is a romantic magnet for every female in a three-mile vicinity.

Conquests include the cleaner Gabina, who has just lost her prospective groom and the cashier.

Indeed he even finds time, and indeed the nerve, to fit in an affair with the daughter of the fearsome ticket inspector Evzen.

Part of the Ales’ charm might be that he is not middle-aged, short, fat, greasy and sweaty — unlike the rest of the male characters who are so interchangeable and nondescript the viewer loses the will to keep up with who is who.

It doesn’t matter much. They all seem to sit around gossiping and swilling lager. Indeed the whole film seems like an advert for Czech beer which understandably has a lot better international reputation than that nation’s film industry.

Indeed perhaps there are plot intricacies more accessible for the less sober viewer.

Either way I stayed beerless and baffled throughout this 90-minute offering which although not unpleasant doesn’t really work on any level — unless you wondered what it was like to live in a really boring Czech town where having the painters in and poor quality tea cups are hot topics of debate.

Slice of life movies aren’t supposed to be action-packed and maybe the fact the film doesn’t go anywhere is perhaps the point writers Pavel Gobl and Roman Svejda were trying to make — the characters aren’t going anywhere either and are stuck in humdrum lives buoyed by romances and creeping alcoholism.

But without anything to hold the attention I doubt whether many paying audiences will think Rail Yard Blues was worthy being sidetracked for.