Emma Thompson in Late Night (photograph via the Sundance Institute)

Within the film, Newbury’s ratings may be dwindling, but there’s a certain schadenfreude to witnessing her decline. Behind the scenes, she treats those around her with disdain. With a damning insult never far from her mouth, and the power that she wields, she strikes terror into the souls of her employees. She generally makes herself feel better by belittling others and she fires people on the spot with casual cruelty. It’s like watching The Devil Wears Prada meets The Apprentice.

We see most of her bad behaviour through the eyes of Molly (Mindy Kaling), who has just joined Newbury’s writing team. Newbury blatantly tells Molly that she’s a diversity hire. Newbury has a reputation for not liking women; her all-male writing team is testament to this. Adding a female to her team of scribes is the first of many changes that Newbury introduces after she’s been told her show is going to be cancelled at the end of the season. She’s hitherto avoided contact with her writing team, but has decided to have regular meetings with them to improve her material and her connection to the viewing public.

As an industry outsider, Molly brings a fresh pair of eyes to the dilemma that Newbury finds herself in. Much of the time her ideas are rejected or ridiculed, but despite the rough reception Molly receives from her boss, she can occasionally be the voice of reason and an unlikely source of good judgement to Newbury.  

Molly also acts as an audience surrogate. Through her we are introduced to the process of comedy writing for television, the efforts to remain topical and reflect popular culture while also respecting the boundaries enforced by the public persona delivering the material.  

Mindy Kaling as Molly in Late Night (photograph by Emily Aragones)

There’s little reference at first that Newbury is a woman in a male-dominated profession. It isn’t until Molly finds her voice among the writing team that Newbury seriously entertains the thought of delivering jokes from a woman’s point of view instead of ignoring the obvious benefits this different point of reference offers.

It also comes at a time when her nemesis appears in the form of a jock comic (a suitably creepy Ike Barinholtz) whose material revolves around demeaning women. He’s at once reprehensible but also a threat because he’s younger and edgier, and another sign to Newbury that she is becoming obsolete.

While Newbury may be losing her edge, there are no such concerns for Emma Thompson. Although often garlanded for her serious roles, Thompson is first and foremost a comic actor. She’s rarely had the opportunity to execute her immaculate comedic skills as much as she does here. She gets the lion’s share of the film’s zingers, and she delivers them with a withering contempt that just gets better as the film progresses. Importantly, she retains her British accent, which gives her an otherness and, in her character’s mind, a sense of superiority.

Kaling makes for an effective foil, her character’s indefatigable perkiness and humble nature in sharp contrast to the barbs of her jaded employer. Kaling, who also wrote the screenplay, draws from her own experience. She was the first female writer on the US remake of The Office and has previously stated that her employment on the show felt like a token diversity hire.       

Kaling’s Molly is the heart of the film, even if she cedes the limelight to the flashier role of Katherine Newbury. Thompson’s Newbury, like Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), is an intimidating despot who only shows humanity when she’s at home with her husband. In the case of Newbury, it’s her ailing long-time companion Walter, played with great tenderness by John Lithgow, for whom she reserves all her affection.

Late Night has a thing or two to say about the gender imbalance in the entertainment industry, not just in representation, but in the things a man can get away with that a woman can’t. Kaling never labours these points; instead, she adheres to the sitcom mentality of keeping the tone light and the jokes firing at a steady rate.       

Like Kaling, director Nisha Ganatra has worked extensively in television; her resumé includes episodes of Girls, Transparent, and another Kaling creation, The Mindy Project. Her visual style certainly doesn’t beg for a big-screen experience, but given that the film is set in and around a television studio, the aesthetic is in keeping with the material.

Late Night works as well as it does thanks to the sharpness of the script and because watching Emma Thompson in full flight is a thing of great joy. She handles the comedy elements with aplomb and, when you’re least expecting it, hits you in the gut with a poignant epilogue.  

It’s a great shame that a film as fresh and smart as Late Night has little chance of holding its own in the multiplexes against big studio franchises. Like it’s protagonist, it will likely find an appreciative audience on the small screen.  

Late Night (Roadshow), 102 minutes, directed by Nisha Ganatra. In cinemas 8 August 2019.