Wicked Little Letters (15)

The true tale of a foul-mouthed scribbler in 1920s Sussex is given nuance by a stellar cast including Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan and Timothy Spall.

Colman plays Edith Swan, the Littlehampton resident who finds herself inundated with vulgar correspondences. Buckley, in turn, plays Rose Gooding, the Irish immigrant with a colourful turn of phrase, who was dragged into court accused of authoring the letters, on the sole evidence that she seemed rude enough to have done it.

Curtain-twitching soon becomes all-out war, and even a national news story when Edith accuses Rose of sending her a series of creatively insulting anonymous letters, the latest of which calls Edith a “foxy-arsed old whore” and a “sad, stinky bitch”, to name a few.

Unsurprisingly, Colman is the star of the show; she effortlessly elevates the dirty material to hysterical heights. She’s a naturally funny presence, and in her hands Edith is vulnerable yet vindictive, shrinking yet snobbish, in love with her own martyrdom and new-found fame. Wicked Little Letters is an uproarious, smutty Ealing-style comedy that’ll leave the auditorium in stitches.