Film of the Week: The Favourite

Olivia Colman’s career path has been one of the few beacons of light in these troubled times, and she’s on career-best form here, as her Golden Globe attests. She plays a childish, indulged, stroppy, spoilt Queen Anne who, in the early 1700s, happily lets her lover, played by Rachel Weisz, run the country for her while she eats cake. This cosy setup is shaken by the arrival of ambitious upstart Abigail, played by Emma Stone (pictured), who sets about replacing Weisz in the queen’s affections – literally. Irreverent and wallowing in the strangeness of a past where the blokes thought powdered wigs were the height of butch, this is a refreshing antidote to Sunday evening fantasies of royalty as costume pageant. Most importantly, though, it’s bloody hilarious, the power games between the three women playing out as a deliciously black comedy. Times & trailer