Glorious 39

Stephen Poliakoff is a prodigious and prolific talent. So are male rabbits, but they do not have cartes blanches for British film industry funds, top actors' services and BBC screen time. Glorious 39 is writer-director Poliakoff's latest (2009) take on 20th-Century English socio-political history. For Poliakoff, that's the history of upper-class and Establishment families.

Such families live in photogenic mansions blessed with lovely furniture and fittings, gorgeous costumes and diffident Bill Nighy. This time, the director's favourite actor is the head of the Keyes family. Its whole class is keen to hang on to power in a world where the word "Glorious" used to refer to the beginning of the pheasant shooting season.

It is also the nickname of Keyes' eldest, adopted daughter, played by Romola (Atonement) Garai. Joining her in the star-studded scenario are Julie Christie, David Tennant, Christopher Lee, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Northam, and a chubby young actor with the memorable family name of Kubrick-Finney. Other period-drama faces appear, for this is a compendium movie for lovers of Brideshead, Gosford Park, Agatha Christie, Andrew Davies' adaptations, etc and other up-market soap operas a la Poliakoff.

Technically, they are delightful televisual confectionery in pretty wrappings. There's little to chew on in the screenplays, but the dialogue trips the light fantastic decorously. The morality playfulness of the finished products is beyond reproach, as are the anti-Nazi anti-appeasement pro-Churchillian sentiments in this one. Anyone who needs a potted history of politics in 1939, pictures of pretty symbolic cats posing, and lovingly lit shots of full dorsal nudity, may find this this to be a classy entertainment. But will Poliakoff ever stop churning them out?