The Lost King

There is something inherently, delightfully absurd about the fact that the remains of a medieval monarch—the last of the House of York, no less—were discovered beneath a social services parking lot in Leicester, under a parking space marked with a spray-painted "R." If you pitched that to a Hollywood studio in the 90s, they’d tell you it was too on-the-nose. Yet, The Lost King takes this bizarre true-life footnote and turns it into a surprisingly spiky drama about who gets to "own" history.

I watched this on my laptop while eating a slightly burnt grilled cheese, and for some reason, the smell of singed cheddar made the grey, rainy Leicester streets on screen feel more authentic. It’s the kind of film that thrives on that specific British brand of dampness and quiet determination.

The Power of Being Unseen

At the center of this quest is Philippa Langley, played with a fragile yet steely brilliance by Sally Hawkins. If you’ve seen her in The Shape of Water or Happy-Go-Lucky, you know Sally Hawkins has a PhD in portraying women who are consistently underestimated by everyone around them. In this 2022 retelling, Philippa is struggling with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and a job that doesn’t value her, which serves as the emotional bridge to her obsession with Richard III.

She sees Richard (played as a silent, regal hallucination by Harry Lloyd) not as the "hunchback" villain of Shakespearean propaganda, but as a man who was misrepresented and discarded. It’s a bit of a meta-commentary on our current era; in a world of social media "reclaiming" narratives, Philippa is doing the analog version. She isn't an academic; she’s an enthusiast, which in the eyes of the University of Leicester, makes her a nuisance. Academic gatekeeping is just high-brow bullying, and watching Philippa navigate the condescending smirks of the "experts" is where the film finds its most relatable friction.

A Small Film in a Loud Era

Released in the tail-end of 2022, The Lost King suffered from the very thing it depicts: it was overlooked. In a cinematic landscape dominated by the Marvel multiverse or high-concept streaming spectacles, a "nice" British drama about an amateur historian feels almost rebellious in its simplicity. It’s directed by Stephen Frears, who previously gave us The Queen and Philomena, and you can feel that same DNA here. Stephen Frears excels at the "small battle against a big system" trope, and he avoids letting the story drift into sugary sentimentality.

The screenplay, co-written by Steve Coogan (who also plays Philippa’s ex-husband, John) and Jeff Pope, is sharp and witty. Steve Coogan provides a grounded, skeptical foil to Philippa’s intuition, and their relationship is one of the more realistic depictions of "amicable divorce" I’ve seen recently. They aren’t screaming at each other; they’re just two people trying to co-parent while one of them spends the mortgage money on searching for a 500-year-old skeleton.

The Controversy in the Concrete

One of the reasons this film is worth a look right now is the fascinating real-world drama that followed its release. The film paints the University of Leicester officials—specifically Richard Taylor, played by Lee Ingleby—as the villains who tried to swoop in and take credit once the bones were actually found. In the real world, Taylor actually sued the filmmakers for libel, claiming his portrayal was "unfair and damaging."

While the movie definitely takes creative liberties to heighten the drama (as all "true story" films do), it highlights a very contemporary anxiety: the tension between institutional authority and individual passion. Watching Mark Addy (our beloved Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones) as the sympathetic archaeologist Richard Buckley provides a nice middle ground between those two worlds. He represents the "proper" way of doing things, but he’s the only one willing to give Philippa a seat at the table.

The film also benefits from a gorgeous, old-fashioned score by Alexandre Desplat, who worked on The Grand Budapest Hotel. It gives the search a sense of whimsy and mystery that keeps the pacing from feeling like a dry history lecture. Even if you aren't a history buff, the sheer "I told you so" energy of the final act is immensely satisfying.

The Lost King is a charming, if slightly conventional, drama that succeeds because it leans into the human ego rather than just the historical facts. It’s a film about the dignity of being right when the whole world thinks you’re crazy. While it might not have set the box office on fire, it’s a perfect "Sunday afternoon" movie that reminds us that sometimes, the most important things in life are buried exactly where we think they are—we just have to be stubborn enough to dig. If you missed it during its quiet theatrical run, it’s well worth hunting down on streaming.