You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
ONCE A WEEK
What to Watch
Get all the latest TV news and movie reviews, streaming recommendations and exclusive interviews sent directly to your inbox each week in a newsletter put together by our experts just for you.
ONCE A WEEK
What to Watch Soapbox
Sign up to our new soap newsletter to get all the latest news, spoilers and gossip from the biggest US soaps sent straight to your inbox… so you never miss a moment of the drama!
Loosely inspired by a true-story, this period drama about Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) comes to vivid life.
Loosely inspired by a true-story, this period drama about Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) comes to vivid life.
The illegitimate daughter of a Royal Navy captain and an African slave, Belle was raised among the aristocracy in 18th-century England and the film contrives a romantic plot in which she's courted by a fortune-hunting snob (James Norton), falls for an idealistic lawyer (Sam Reid) and also inspires her great uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson), to make a landmark legal ruling against the slave trade.
Mbatha-Raw gives a wonderful performance and though the movie plays around with the facts - in reality she wasn't an heiress and her future husband was a servant - it is always engrossing and by the time the entwined romantic and legal plots come to a head, you will find yourself cheering her on.
