Hyde Park on Hudson

You’ve got to feel for Daisy Suckley (Laura Linney), the lead character and narrator of Hyde Park on Hudson. Not only is her kissing cousin, President Franklin D Roosevelt (Bill Murray), forming special relationships with every other bit of skirt in the vicinity of the eponymous country estate, director Roger Michell (Notting Hill) also has wandering eyes and seems far more interested in a subplot dealing with a state visit by everyone’s favourite stammering royal, King George VI (Samuel West), and his upholstered wife, Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman), than his buttoned-up protagonist's sexual awakening.

And quite right too. Daisy’s tryst with FDA has its moments, including a sublime bit of back-of-the-head acting from Murray during a first date hand-job, but in truth our emissary into the world of the 32nd Commander-in-Chief is a bit of a drip. Things get much more interesting when the Windsors come to visit. It’s 1939. The Western world hangs in the balance. Britain's monarch comes to FDA cap in hand, looking for help to take on Hitler.

It may be a weighty backdrop but the cast’s spry performances keep proceedings feather light. The real dilemma isn’t the threat of Nazism but whether the King will drop his Old World airs and graces and chow down on a hotdog. What appeals about Hyde Park on Hudson is its easy nonchalance: it’s never trying too hard to win us over, which is exactly why it does.