Melody is the new hire at the Ministry of Jingle, a government department in charge of creating public safety jingles about a range of topics; seatbelts, condoms, littering. She arrives ready to tackle her big anxieties and the world’s most complex problems. Most pressingly, the great flood going on: it’s pouring into their basement, a ticking, dripping reminder that climate change is upon us and everything is going to get worse. She is gently steered away from such big and knotty topics, and towards issues with a one-line solution presented in hook form, a chorus at most. It’s silly, light and comedic set up, full of human folly and banal office politics, with a lingering but unavoidable sense of dread. The swinging pendulum that many of us deal with day to day, between blissful escape, the odd chuckle, water cooler chat and the fear of a harsh reckoning.

The film ends with Melody staring down her chosen issue: a tsunami. Right at the moment of impact, when all hope will be lost, and her song an exercise in futility… she is seized with musical inspiration. We’re left with lingering questions – did she go method, finding the fear, bringing a tsunami to life in order to complete the assignment? Or did she only find the urgency when a real tsunami, a real crisis, loomed large in front of her, and it was too late?