Sally Potter's comedy-drama The Party is an enjoyably misanthropic affair boosted by some very fine performances and a screenplay almost as caustic as that of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Over its brisk 71 minute running time, all its characters reveal their darker sides. They're affluent and privileged types who appear to have the world at their fingertips but we quickly discover their capacity for backbiting as well as some of some of their most intimate and incriminating secrets.

The hostess, first seen in slow motion, close up and brandishing a gun, is politician Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas). She has just been made a government minister and is celebrating with some of her oldest, closest friends. Thatcher-like, she wants to show off her ability to hold high office but still attend to the catering. Her husband (a very gaunt looking Timothy Spall) sits listening to blues and jazz while she busies herself in her apron in the kitchen. The first guests to arrive are Janet's old friend April (Patricia Clarkson) and her infuriating partner, lifestyle guru Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), who speaks only in New Age clichés. The other guests are lesbian academic Martha (Cherry Jones) and her dungaree-wearing lover Jinny (Emily Mortimer), who has just discovered she is pregnant with triplets. Also present is city slicker Tom (Cillian Murphy). He brings a gun and cocaine into the house but arrives without his wife Marianne (who works for Janet and who, even in her absence, plays a pivotal role in the plot).

Aleksei Rodionov's black and white cinematography gives the characters a sheen of elegance but their behaviour grows ever more barbaric. Potter's screenplay slowly reveals their bad faith and duplicity. They've been having affairs with each other. Illness, addiction and betrayal are clouding their lives. The fates are against them.

This is a chamber piece, clearly shot quickly and on a relatively modest budget. There is pathos as well as humour in the way what should be a celebratory evening so quickly unravels. Potter includes slapstick elements (a champagne cork shattering a pane of glass, Tom's attempts to hide his gun in the dustbin) but these sit aside moments of real bleakness. Amid the mounting mayhem, the writer-director finds the opportunity to throw in references to the creaking National Health Service, to feminism, class and workplace politics.

Potter strikes a very swift tempo. At times, the film grows as manic as Cillian Murphy's increasingly strung out Tom who needs a line of coke to help him cope with every social challenge the party poses him. One moment Kristin Scott Thomas's Janet is worrying about her hair and texting her lover. The next she is in a state of extreme angst and is declaring her undying love for her husband. In its mixture of jauntiness and despair, her performance here recalls the one she gave in Anthony Minghella's film version of Samuel Beckett's Play. Spall is morose in the extreme while Ganz's equanimity in the face of every new misfortune becomes ever more irritating.

At times, The Party becomes a little glib. The hidden connections between the characters are easy to spot and we can predict precisely who's at the door at the film's delirious endpoint. This, though, is lively and invigorating filmmaking with an energy that belies its own pessimism.

Created by Emily Mortimer, daughter of Rumpole author John Mortimer, and Dolly Wells, whose father was satirist John Wells, this semi-improvised series could be dismissed as an exercise in self-indulgent showbiz nepotism. However, while not wildly funny, it is richly nuanced and observational, drawing on a deeply embedded real-life friendship between the pair. In the final episode of the current series, it's the opening night of the off-Broadway play the pair have been planning. Inevitably, however, crisis strikes at the last minute.

Dolly Wells interview

Dolly Wells was forever in the shadow of childhood friend Emily Mortimer... then they wrote their sitcom Doll & Em together and it changed her life.

Radio Times review

Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells's comedy isn't for those who prefer their gags with punchlines. But if you're tickled by excruciating silences and lashings of irony, this not-so-fictional account of their friendship will have you in stitches.

In this episode, they insult and then attempt to win back the actresses who will play them in their first effort as playwrights. "She's got no home, no career, no relationship," the one playing Doll says to the other, as if the woman she's talking about isn't sitting on the other side of the table, thin-lipped and sad-eyed - "They're unlikeable."

Over on Sky Atlantic, there were two more women with an ear for convincing, funny and unselfconscious dialogue. Last week saw the welcome return of Doll & Em, a sitcom written by real-life best friends Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells who play exaggerated versions of themselves. The opening episode saw the duo retreat to a lighthouse to write a play.

The charm of Doll & Em lies in its minute and accurate observation of female friendship. There is one scene, in the back of a New York cab, when Doll congratulates Em for having hair that "looks French" before bemoaning the state of her own barnet in order to elicit a return compliment from Em, which is an understated masterclass in the way women work.

Doll & Em review: 'breezily watchable'

Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells's sitcom is charming but not quite funny enough, says Michael Hogan.

Second series for the super awkward-buddy comedy starring real-life best friends Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells. The now-reconciled chums decide to stay in a lighthouse for inspiration, so they can write their new play together. Then it's off to Em's house in Brooklyn where Doll moves into the au pair's room. At first, it's all happy selfies and mutual appreciation. But it can't last long as the delicately balanced see-saw of their friendship begins to teeter. Tonight's guest star is Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Radio Times review

Dolly Wells and Emily Mortimer write as well as star in this satire about lifelong friends who are both actors. In the first series, out-of-work Doll became Em's assistant with messy results. It was deliciously excruciating because it was so close to the bone: they really are childhood pals who chose the same career path, and on paper Mortimer is the more successful.

Series two finds them best mates again and endeavoring to pen a script together, which of course is what the real Mortimer and Wells have done. There's a brilliantly awkward scene in which they pitch their efforts to a nonplussed Harvey Weinstein.

Dolly Wells interview

As season two of the sitcom Doll & Em begins, Dolly Wells talks about her best friend on and off screen, Emily Mortimer, and her tangled relationship with her father, the satirist John Wells.

Ewan McGregor & Olivia Wilde to appear in Doll & Em

Ewan McGregor and Olivia Wilde are amongst the names announced for series two of Doll & Em. They will be joined by Evan Rachel Wood and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the series, which stars Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells.