Richard Eyre

Allelujah review

Starry NHS hospital drama is less than scalpel-sharp.

Allelujah, Alan Bennett's 2018 play about the ailing fortunes of a geriatric hospital, gets a tonally bizarre big screen adaptation courtesy of Call The Midwife creator Heidi Thomas and director Richard Eyre. A slew of beloved British stage and screen stars - among them Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi - play the hospital's ailing patients, while Jennifer Saunders (as a ward nurse), Russell Tovey (as a government management consultant) and Bally Gill (as an immigrant doctor) attend to the plot, which revolves around the cash-strapped hospital's viability. Tovey gets a couple of good scenes, but a last-minute swerve into The Good Nurse territory doesn't come off at all.

Blithe Spirit is more Ham Dram than Ab Fab

Seventy years on from its record-breaking wartime run, Noel Coward's light comedy Blithe Spirit haunts the West End again.

Jennifer Saunders does well with the dated script to bring out the humour and despite director Richard Eyre allegedly asking her to tone down the physical comedy from the tour in Bath -- still camps it up too far otherwise. Overall more ham dram than Ab Fab, her over-the-top style of acting does little to endear us to one of the play's more sympathetic characters.