Like a weird episode of Downton – with less sexual chemistry: Rebecca reviewed

Rebecca is a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic, twisted, never-out-of-print tale of sexual jealousy. It’s directed by Ben Wheatley, with a script by Jane Goldman, and stars Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas. High hopes? Me too. But though it’s perfectly watchable, it’s not at all daring.

Would the second Mrs de Winter be more fully formed and less of a pallid, round-shouldered meek little thing? Would sinister Mrs Danvers have more substance? Would it be a modern interpretation for modern times? No, is the short answer. And also it just isn’t sexy enough. Meanwhile, I forgot to start this with: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…’ as it’s how every other review will begin, I’m sure. But at least I got it into the second paragraph, so don’t be too aggrieved.

This is not, Wheatley has insisted, a remake of Hitchcock’s 1940 Oscar-winning version starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, as Goldman has looked afresh at the source material and would you call every production of King Lear, say, a remake of one that’s gone before? Fair point, so I’ll try and not let Hitchcock’s version haunt me, as if it were the first Mrs de Winter, and this the second, but it may prove hard.