Fear rises like gas from a corpse in Armando Iannucci’s brilliant horror-satire The Death Of Stalin. It’s a sulphurous black comedy about backstairs Kremlin intrigue following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 – adapted by Iannucci, David Schneider and Ian Martin.

It stars Michael Palin  as Molotov, Steve Buscemi is a nervy Khrushchev, Andrea Riseborough as Stalin’s wan daughter Svetlana, Jeffrey Tambor is hilarious as the vain and preposterous Malenkov, and Rupert Friend as Stalin’s deadbeat boozer son, Vasily.  Jason Isaacs is the truculent war hero Zhukov and the first among equals is Simon Russell Beale.

Read the 5 star Guardian review