More, please

Late Night is a comedy starring Emma Thompson as a chat-show host in America whose ratings are in decline and who hires her first female writer. This is Molly, who is welcomed by the bank of male writers, not. They initially mistake her for someone who has come to take their food orders and greet her with: ‘I’ll have the soup.’ So it’s that. And then it’s quite a lot more of that, one way or another. And, you know, good. A woman-centred comedy that satirises the white male stronghold on comedy? Count me in! And it does have its terrific moments, plus Thompson is absolutely superb, and clearly having a ball.

Directed by Nisha Ganatra, the film is written by Mindy Kaling, who was the only female writer on the American version of The Office, so she knows of what she speaks, and she also stars as Molly. Molly works in a chemical plant but is desperate to break into comedy and through convoluted plot shenanigans that would suffer more in the retelling than they even did in the watching, she ends up working for Katherine Newbury (Thompson — Kaling wrote this part specifically for her).