A brave portrait of middle-aged sexual liberation: BRIAN VINER reviews Good Luck To You, Leo Grande

Goodluck to you, Leo Grande Rating: Emma Thompson might not be everyone’s cup of tea, let alone their glass of fizz, but as a widowed former RE teacher called Nancy, she had me hooked from the moment she apprehensively takes a bottle of champagne from a hotel mini-bar in preparation for an encounter with a male escort. The sex worker’s pseudonym is Leo Grande and he is quite splendidly played by Peaky Blinders actor Daryl McCormack. Emma Thompson might not be everyone’s cup of tea, let alone their glass of fizz, but as a widowed former RE teacher called Nancy, she had me hooked from the moment she apprehensively takes a bottle of champagne from a hotel mini-bar in preparation for an encounter with a male escort When we first meet her, Nancy is a bag of nerves. It is two years since the death of her husband Robert, the only man she has ever been to bed with Brand’s excellent script keeps all this real, faltering only once or twice when Nancy’s guilelessness feels a bit forced, but otherwise sustaining our interest in knowing how it might end.