I wish all historical dramas were like this!

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2018)

An excellently made film in every way. The acting. cinematography, pacing, almost perfect. Best of all, unlike nearly all other historical dramas, they almost completely refrained from inventing un-historical and implausible stuff to push the film-maker's point of view.
Among the few slight failures in this regard was to push a little too hard on the "Churchill friend of the ordinary common working class people" angle (combined with the unhistorical portrayal of the Labour Party as always strongly pro-Churchill and anti-Chamberlain/Halifax).
Another quibble is a single line giving the impression that George VI hated Churchill because he was pro-Edward VIII remaining king. In fact George VI never wanted to be king, but took it on as his duty after Edward's abdication. Churchill's only input was to publicly worry about whether Baldwin was hurrying Edward (a personal friend of Churchill) into a rash decision. Once it was shown this was not the case Churchill was happy with the abdication. There was never the slightest question of his total loyalty to King George.
I thought I knew everything important there was to know about Churchill and WW2. But this film made it so much more real by filling in what nobody else thought to mention.
Especially pleasing was that the anti-war Chamberlain and Halifax and their followers were not portrayed as the usual cardboard cut-out cowardly and secretly pro-Nazi idiots, but as true patriots who sincerely thought they were doing the best they could to save another generation of innocents from senseless slaughter; but who discovered that they had been mistaken.