Thea Sharrock gives actors room to be funny and vulnerable, and we value her patience with people. But Wicked Little Letters suggests she is too willing to let a good cast carry an underwritten story.
Fi1m perspective
In Wicked Little Letters (2024), a respectable household receives obscene letters and suspicion falls on the woman next door. Sharrock understands the immediate comic pleasure of putting those words into those mouths. We laughed at the collision of obscenity and respectability, then grew tired of being offered the same joke. With Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in the cast, the early scenes have enough life to keep the thin material going. The film needs more than its cast can supply.
Her theatre background helps explain that confidence in performers. Rehearsal, trust and listening recur in her approach, and her stage work includes After the Dance (2010) with Benedict Cumberbatch. Television brought The Hollow Crown (2012), for which she directed Tom Hiddleston in Henry V, before her feature debut, Me Before You (2016). Her preference for adaptations and character-led stories gives that move between forms a clear continuity: the actors remain central to the work.
Her television credits also include Call the Midwife (2012), a programme we recommend with more confidence than Wicked Little Letters. Heidi Thomas's series earns most of its tears by treating women's work as something worth sustained attention. That is praise for the programme, not a claim that Sharrock alone is responsible for its strong performances. Its insistence on finding a lesson can still soften the harder stories, a weakness worth keeping in mind when looking at her cinema.
That caution matters in Wicked Little Letters, where Jonny Sweet's script keeps returning to profanity instead of developing the anger beneath it. There is a sadder story here about a woman who is not permitted to be angry, and a town readier to punish its loud neighbour than question the quiet one. Sharrock recognises it, but too often reaches for another laugh before the discomfort can take hold. The thin mystery gives her little help. For her next comedy, we would welcome a script that lets the actors stay uncomfortable for longer than it takes to deliver another joke.
Biography
Thea Sharrock is a British theatre and film director. In 2001, at the age of 24, she became artistic director of London’s Southwark Playhouse, the youngest person to hold such a position in British theatre.
She made her feature film debut directing the adaptation Me Before You (2016). Subsequent films include The One and Only Ivan (2020), Wicked Little Letters (2023), The Beautiful Game (2024) and Ladies First (2026). Her television credits include episodes of The Hollow Crown (2012), for which she also wrote the screenplay for one episode, and Call the Midwife (2013–2014).
