It helps that the cast reads like a list of British
stage and screen royalty including Bill Nighy, Billie Whitelaw, Eric Mason, Jim Broadbent, Stuart Wilson, Paul Freeman and Kevin Eldon.
But over a long career on
stage and screens large
and small, Helen Mirren, who plays the spiky policewoman, has enacted a raft of bloody Queens, one of whom won her a richly deserved Oscar
and swelled her already solid cachet with
royalty - loving American audiences.