Right Royal Fun

Our approaching escape from the Euro-wog yoke has plunged the casting process for a forthcoming film into near-poetic depths of Britishness. Pablo Larraín, the Chilean director of dramas about life under the kind of people Margaret Thatcher admired, is preparing a film about the family difficulties of a clan of London-based benefit claimants, but the casting director has been forced to stipulate that those bearing passports of a certain colour need not apply. Major roles are usually cast with people who have the same citizenship as the financiers, and the backers of Larraín's film belong among the lesser breeds. Such refined ironies are a welcome touch amid the charmless farce, reminiscent of a late-period Carry On film rebooted by Julius Streicher, which has thus far characterised the patriotic posturing of the master race.