Funny, totally charming brain dead fair with a deeply idiotic political bend. It feels a lot like paddington but with Lesley Manville instead of a computer bear. Fun mix of great performances (Manville), respectable phone ins (Isaacs and Huppert) and performances from people who barely know how to speak let alone act (all the young people). Just because Manville is a beautiful sexy woman and not a cgi bear doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty for the FX team to do here, as pretty much everything from shop signage to the Eiffel Tower and big set extensions every time you can see the sky is done with enduringly cheap vfx work. I really had fun with it! There are approximately 20 million adaptations of this book I guess, but I hope to see this incarnation of Mrs. ‘Arris again when she ends the Cold War after becoming a minister of parliament (idk I just read the titles of the sequels) there’s a version of this with Angela Langsbury and Omar Sharif the Merovingian is in this lol