Notes on a Scandal

Depressingly British fare...as if Richard Curtis suddenly decided to do sinister for a change.

The Academy was right though: amidst all of the cringey stuff, Dame Judy Dench's realisation of the character of Barbara Covett is remarkable.

But the rest of the set-up is dire and Patrick Marber's script is predictably self-aware and theatrical.

Tellingly, we had watched the bizarre but stirring Euro-flick Respiro the night before, and V was to joke that there was more sensuality in the scene where Grazia's family pin her down in order to stick a needle in her backside than in any of those where Blanchett's bohemian frolicks with her oiky fifteen-year-old.

But it would be so un-British to play (and write) this as anything other than simply a device to set Barbara's machinations in motion.