Wicked Little Letters

Littlehampton in the 1920s. Anonymous letters full of unrepeatable obscenity are circulating. The devout Edith Swan is the target, the blame lands on her neighbour Rose Gooding, an Irish single mother, and Rose is arrested. Woman Police Constable Gladys Moss does not believe the story and starts pulling at the thread. Thea Sharrock directed. Olivia Colman plays Edith, Jessie Buckley plays Rose, Anjana Vasan is Constable Moss and Timothy Spall is Edith's father Edward. The story is not invented. It is drawn from the real case known as the Littlehampton libels of the early 1920s, with the historian Emily Cockayne's books on the subject among the sources. It screened at Toronto in September 2023, opened in the UK in February 2024 and arrived on Netflix in July 2024. On a 12.6 million dollar budget it took 27.2 million. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 80 percent and Metacritic at 58, a visible gap between audience appetite and critical patience. Who it is for: viewers who like foul-mouthed British comedy and two actors playing off each other. Who it is not for: anyone who tires of swearing being the joke itself. The film goes to that card often.