The year is 1936. As the new steward of London’s Chronicle, David Brooke (Mark Strong) seeks to revive the financially troubled daily as the country’s most-read family paper. In the firing line is long time theatre critic Jimmy Erksine (McKellen), whose extravagant prose and personal “proclivities” are distasteful to David. Jimmy has a lot to lose as an elderly gay man in a culture and legal system deeply hostile to homosexuality. Yet he cannot resist writing the flamboyantly merciless critiques that are his trademark.

Actor Nina Land (Arterton) – for whom the married David secretly carries a torch – is a regular target for Jimmy’s most withering remarks. As pressure to appease his employer mounts, Jimmy concocts a plot to entrap both David and Nina – herself secretly in love with a married painter (Ben Barnes). But with the Blackshirts taking to the streets amid anti-queer police raids, Jimmy may be grossly overestimating his ability to emerge from his elaborate scheme unscathed.

Directed by Anand Tucker (producer, 2003’s Girl with a Pearl Earring) and adapted by Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal) from Anthony Quinn’s novel Curtain Call, The Critic brims with intrigue – each of its central characters struggling within a web of blackmail and fraught desire to hang on to what they hold dear.