Keeley’s the real deal as Mrs Dahl

To Olivia Cert: PG, 1hr 39mins Sky Cinema, available now

I Care A Lot Cert: 15, 1hr 58mins Amazon, available now

Roald Dahl died more than 30 years ago and yet his creative legacy doesn’t just live on but positively thrives. A new film version of The Witches was released last year, a Willy Wonka prequel is in the pipeline and the hit musical Matilda may not just be returning to the theatre when they finally reopen, but to cinemas one day too.

So it’s difficult to imagine there was ever a time when Dahl was a struggling writer or, indeed, the poignant circumstances in which some of his best-loved children’s books were written. The fact that he was married to a glamorous, Oscar-winning film star, Patricia Neal, for 30 years is easily forgotten too. To Olivia is the film that puts us right on all fronts.

Covering similar ground to Goodbye Christopher Robin, the hugely moving 2017 drama telling the story of how Winnie- The- Pooh came to be written, and in frankly a not dissimilar style, it’s set in the early 1960s when Dahl and Neal were living a rickety semi-rural life in Buckinghamshire with their then three young children – Olivia, Tessa and Theo.

Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville plays Dahl and does so very well, convincingly portraying him as a short- tempered and often drunken curmudgeon who was desperate for praise but angrily rejected it when it was offered. And yet he could be funny, charming and hugely imaginative when it came to playing with his children.

A beautifully cast Keeley Hawes (right) is every bit as good – glamorous enough to totally convince as a film star who has temporarily put her career on hold and yet real enough to look completely at home amid the rows and domestic chaos. As depicted here – and the screenplay is partially based on a biography of Neal, An Unquiet Life – theirs was clearly a tumultuous marriage.

But it is also one that is horribly tested when Olivia catches a serious case of measles and is hospitalised. For once, Dahl cannot retreat to his draughty garden shed with a bottle of whisky, sharpen his pencils, pull a blanket over his knees and wait for inspiration to arrive.

What ensues is a powerful and emotional story that isn’t always easy to watch. And if it’s slightly let down by some dodgy visual effects and an unnecessarily protracted visit to Hollywood – where Neal has to convince Paul Newman she’s right for a part in Hud – it’s redeemed by a touching final film performance from the late Geoffrey Palmer, as a retired but theologically uncompromising former Archbishop of Canterbury, and a scene-stealing turn from Isabella Jonsson as Tessa. One of those films you’ll be pleased to have seen.

Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to movies, I like to know which side I’m supposed to be cheering for. And that’s the problem with I Care A Lot: you never do. I mean, it surely can’t be Marla Grayson.

Yes, she’s played by lovely Rosamund Pike kitted out in a killer blonde bob, bodycon wardrobe and skyscraper heels but – by her own narrated admission – she’s an evil, amoral fraudster who dishonestly gets vulnerable older people put into care while she, as their courtappointed legal guardian, sells off their houses and plunders their savings.

But then nor, surely, can it be the other side who, once Grayson has locked up a particularly wealthy woman with no living family, turn out to be a bunch of trigger- happy gangsters, led by Game Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage. Mind you, Grayson is so irredeemably wicked I was tempted… more than once.

This is a film that fate fully hasn’ t decided whether it’s a black comedy ( it’s just not funny enough), dark drama or some sort of biting satire on the American dream. One thing’s for sure: it’s definitely a long two hours.