Savage House review: A devilish Richard E Grant excels in this entertaining period farce

This new film is the latest to upend the conventions of the traditional British costume drama.

Richard E. Grant holding a fan

Paramount Pictures/ YouTube

Published: Thursday, 4 June 2026 at 4:27 pm

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A star rating of 3 out of 5.

In the past decade or so, there’s been a notable trend of films and TV shows looking to upend the typically staid conventions of the traditional British costume drama. On the small screen, the likes of Bridgerton and The Great have swapped the polite, chaste norms of the genre for something altogether more steamy, while Yorgos Lanthimos's award-winning 2018 film The Favourite was about as far removed from the calming Sunday night antics of Downton Abbey as it's possible to imagine.

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Savage House – the new 18th century-set black comedy from American writer/director Peter Glanz – fits squarely into this canon, although some of its cinematic influences harken back a little further. In its satire of a rogue-ish upstart looking to climb the aristocratic ladder there are clear echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 epic Barry Lyndon, while there is also something of Peter Greenaway’s eccentric 1982 gem The Draughtsman's Contract in its debauched, irreverent treatment of the past – although this is a rather more conventional offering than that more overtly art-house leaning film.

The main players here are ambitious social climber Lord Chauncey Savage (Richard E Grant) and his wife Lady Savage (Claire Foy) – whom he married for her family’s noble name and fortune, only to callously and carelessly spend the bulk of it away and build up significant debts.

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As we meet them, they’re living in a decaying stately home characterised by rotten fruit and dilapidated fixtures – with the camera often lingering on some of the more disgusting corners of the crumbling estate. It’s a distant echo of the sort of magnificent splendour to which Chauncey might aspire, but still a relatively safe haven from the twin spectres of a Jacobite uprising and a major pox outbreak.

Towards the beginning of the film, we learn that the latter of these problems has actually thrust a rare opportunity upon the Savages. The wealthy, respected Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had been due to dine at another nearby estate, only for their prospective hosts to fall foul of the pox. Now they desperately need an alternative locale to pick up the slack, and the Savage estate just about fits the bill.

And so, with newfound purpose, Chauncey and his wife set about preparing to host a lavish feast. Or rather, they order their staff to do this for them, after first selling their last remaining family jewels to fund the estate’s urgent makeover.

Naturally, all sorts of obstacles pile up: an injured foot for Chauncey turns out to be a nasty case of gout, two of the family servants – with whom the Savage’s are having respective affairs – are scheming behind their backs, and two men who were fraudulently sold the same piece of land by Chauncey keep turning up demanding an explanation.

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It all makes for a broadly entertaining farce, with Grant in particular excelling in a role that feels tailor made for his particular talents. His crazed line deliveries – especially whenever his character sets off on one of his frequent rants and raves – are pitch perfect, while the more strait-laced Foy makes for an ideal foil.

Glanz largely keeps a handle on the chaos, and his script contains a fair few funny lines, although for the most part these are likely to prompt titters rather than full on belly laughs. Meanwhile, at times the piece suffers from an irritating over-reliance on voiceover narration – telling us things that it might have been more effective to simply show. It's not clear what would have been lost by dispensing of this device entirely.

The film is at its best when it leans into its weirdest and most visceral impulses; focusing on Chauncey’s flirtations with full blown insanity or honing in on the disgusting body horror of a festering, gangrenous wound.

A more ambitious and genuinely subversive film would have dug a little deeper into this muddy ground. As it is, Savage House is an amusing diversion powered by a pair of devilishly game performances.

Savage House is released in UK cinemas on Friday 5 June.

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Authors

Black and white cut-out portrait headshot of Patrick Cremona, smiling against a lime green background.

Patrick CremonaSenior Film Writer

Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.

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