Film

The Favourite

A vicious, gorgeous comedy about three women fighting for control of a crumbling queen's affections and, therefore, England. Yorgos Lanthimos shoots it in fisheye lenses and candlelight, the dialogue is filthy and fast, and nobody here is a hero — everyone is scheming, and it's glorious to watch. For people who like their period drama with teeth.

TMDb rating7.5

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The Great2020

Nicholas Hoult again, another 18th-century court, the same gleeful disregard for historical accuracy and decorum. It's looser and more anarchic than The Favourite but shares its DNA exactly — comedy as a weapon of survival.

But Three seasons is a bigger commitment than one film, and the tone occasionally tips from savage into merely silly.

The Great poster

Dangerous Liaisons1988

Glenn Close and John Malkovich turn seduction into a blood sport in pre-revolutionary France. Same appetite for watching aristocrats destroy each other for sport, with dialogue as sharp as any rapier.

But It's more elegant and less profane than The Favourite — the cruelty is dressed in silk rather than mud.

Dangerous Liaisons poster

Barry Lyndon1975

Kubrick's account of a man's ruthless climb through 18th-century society, shot with the same painterly obsession over candlelit interiors and class performance. Gorgeous and merciless in equal measure.

But Three hours long and deliberately, almost punishingly slow — this is patience-testing where The Favourite is a sprint.

Barry Lyndon poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

I, Claudius1976

Same engine as The Favourite: a decaying ruler, courtiers who murder with words and poison instead of swords, and women wielding influence as the only power available to them — just Rome instead of Windsor, and thirteen episodes instead of two hours.

BBC's legendary serial about the poisoners and schemers of the Roman imperial court, made on wobbly sets with performances so vicious they don't need special effects. The wigs are worse; the knives are just as sharp.

But Studio-bound 1970s television production values — static cameras, theatrical staging — will test viewers used to modern gloss.

I, Claudius poster
More like this (8)

The Death of Stalin2017

Political jockeying played for pitch-black laughs, with a cast of grotesques scrambling over each other the moment power becomes vacant. Same appetite for turning history into farce without softening the horror underneath.

But Broader and more overtly slapstick — less interested in intimacy, more in absurdity.

The Death of Stalin poster

Marie Antoinette2006

Sofia Coppola's take on a young woman trapped inside royal ritual and boredom, all sugar-pink excess and anachronistic soundtrack. Shares The Favourite's interest in the absurd theatre of court life.

But Much softer and dreamier — style over bite, sympathy over savagery.

Marie Antoinette poster

Vice2018

Adam McKay's gleeful, fourth-wall-breaking dissection of Dick Cheney's rise through the corridors of power. Same delight in showing you how the sausage of influence actually gets made.

But Contemporary and American rather than costumed and European — a very different flavour of political comedy.

Vice poster

The Lobster2015

Lanthimos again, minus the corsets — a deadpan dystopia about coupling and survival. If you fell for his particular camera eye and clipped dialogue here, this is the purer, weirder dose.

But No historical setting to soften the strangeness — this is Lanthimos at his most alienating and surreal.

The Lobster poster

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Another Lanthimos exercise in dread dressed as ordinary life, with the same unblinking camera and characters who speak like they've never met another human being. Cruelty as inevitability.

But Genuinely unsettling rather than funny — this trades the comedy for something closer to horror.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer poster

The Duchess2008no page yet

Keira Knightley as a woman trapped by aristocratic expectation and a husband's cruelty. Less comic, but the same interest in how little power a powerful woman can actually have.

But Plays it straight and mournful where The Favourite plays it wicked and funny — a much sadder evening.

All About Eve1950

Swap the royal court for Broadway and you have the same triangle: an established woman, a younger interloper, and a older powerful figure whose favour decides everything — genre shifted from history to showbiz melodrama, decades before Lanthimos was born.

Bette Davis as an aging star watching a younger woman calculatingly usurp her life and admirers. Ferociously written, endlessly quotable, and just as obsessed with the mechanics of female rivalry.

But Black and white, theatrical in structure, and entirely without the sexual frankness or physical comedy of The Favourite.

All About Eve poster

Wild Wild Country2018

Trade the crumbling monarch for a silent guru and you get the same shape: a charismatic, semi-absent figurehead, and the fiercely capable woman who actually runs things in their name, willing to do anything to keep that closeness — except this actually happened, on camera, within living memory.

A jaw-dropping true-crime documentary about a Oregon commune run by a guru, and the ruthless woman who actually wielded power in his name. Stranger and more dramatic than most fiction manages.

But It's a documentary with real consequences and real victims — the stakes aren't costume-drama abstract, they're uncomfortably recent and true.

Wild Wild Country poster

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