Stage-to-screen review: Prima Facie

When I caught Covid last spring and had to miss a number of shows I'd booked, some felt more of a wrench than others; Suzie Miller's Prima Facie, named after a legal procedure to determine whether a case has enough standing to go to court, was very well-received but also counted as one of 2022's big theatrical events, thanks to Jodie Comer making her West End debut in the monologue. I did at least figure it would eventually turn up on NTatHome since I knew it had been screened to cinemas, but thought it might take a couple of years since a Broadway run is coming up. In fact it's streaming for a limited time a bit earlier than expected, albeit not in all territories so it won't impact on live ticket sales. Comer plays Tessa, a young barrister whom we first meet on cocky form, bragging about the way she tricks witnesses into incriminating themselves on the stand.

TV review: Talking Heads - Her Big Chance /Playing Sandwiches

Of the collection of current and future dames in the new version of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads the most zeitgeisty is surely Jodie Comer - even with the discussion about Killing Eve largely focusing on how much it falls foul of the law of diminishing returns, she's still one of the biggest names to emerge in recent years. The other big name she replaces in these monologues is Julie Walters, as Comer takes on Her Big Chance. She plays young actress Lesley, who's not very bright but still isn't quite dim enough to fool herself that she's not really being used and abused by the film industry she's trying to break into: More by luck than judgement she lands a role as the villain's mostly-naked girlfriend in a low-budget German crime thriller being filmed in Lee-on-Solent, a distinctly chillier location than the Riviera setting it's meant to be. Her Big Chance is a very cleverly balanced tragicomedy - there's a profound sadness to the inevitability with which every man Lesley meets uses her for sex while pretending to help her career, not just on a one-to-one level but the entire cast and crew barely registering her as a person and walking out on her the morning after the night before.