HUMOUR IS BY ROYAL COMMAND

THE bets are off on who will win a royal game of snobbery, seduction and survival in this scabrously funny and multi-award-winning historical drama.

Framed as a barking mad fairytale and set in the cruel court of Britain’s Queen Anne in the early 1700s, it sees two women jockey for position as the monarch’s right hand. Rachel Weisz plays the Duchess of Marlborough, who begins in pole position as the power behind the throne, pushing the gout-afflicted monarch about in a wheelchair. Olivia Colman’s sickly royal passenger is an infantilised monster, damaged from child-rearing, trapped in her palace and wielding immense power without any real understanding of the human consequences. Meanwhile, Emma Stone’s aristocratic Abigail is forced to work as a scullery maid, where she plots her return to high society and becomes a rival of her cousin, the duchess.

Nicholas Hoult’s parliamentarian is pointedly referred to as the Leader of the Opposition, underlining how the women are navigating a male-dominated society.

As you’d expect from a cast of this quality, the performances are tremendous, fuelled by brutal dialogue which is alternately eye-wateringly coarse or sharply witty.

Filming on location at the stately home of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire lends a grand authenticity, while the cast are decorated with beautifully extravagant attire by British Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell.

This is another grotesque theatre of the absurd from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, and though arguably his most mainstream film yet, it is by no means mundane.

It crackles with urgency, humour, tension and desperation.

His ability to offer a degree of sympathy to all his characters, even as he condemns them, is a rare gift in filmmaking.

This is another extraordinary experience from a unique storyteller – and the first great film of 2019.

Out on Tuesday, January 1.