Directed by Dover Kosashvili (M) A seaside town in the Caucuses is the location for Dover Kosashvili’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story. We watch as Laevsky (Andrew Scott) lounges about in slippers all day, drinking, playing cards and occasionally getting up to kinky stuff with the rather large housemaid. At the time that Chekhov wrote the story, aristocratic privilege was beginning to collapse and the obviously spoilt Laevsky is a target for distain. So too is his mistress Nadya (Fiona Glascott) who is married to someone else and but is indulged by her new partner who doesn’t even seem to mind if she flirts outrageously with all and sundry. Naturalist Von Koren (Tobias Menzies) is the man of enlightenment who continually talks of Darwin’s theories of the survival of the species. His dislike of Laevsky’s apathetic attitude towards the world leads to the duel, though exact reasons for the face-off are muddy.

Lezly Herbert