Popularity and ratings play a huge part in Frost/Nixon, yet the film itself may not emerge as a box-office champ. Those familiar with Peter Morgan’s play — which recreates the famous interviews between David Frost and the disgraced ex-US president Richard Nixon in 1977 — could find the faithful adaptation by Ron “Safe Pair of Hands” Howard underwhelming. And those who adored Morgan’s script for The Queen could be frustrated by Frank Langella’s complex but utterly unlovable Nixon.

Devoid of heroes, Frost/Nixon is a film about filming. And — perhaps because I ducked the play and loathed The Queen — I enjoyed every minute of it.

As in The Queen, what we’re offered is a conservative icon seen through the eyes of narky Left-wingers and an eager-to-please but ambitious middle-man. It was Frost’s idea to pay Nixon for a series of interviews post- Watergate and, when US networks passed on the chance to fund the venture, he begged and borrowed from friends to make it happen. Yet he knew very little about his subject, and needed all the help he could get from his two researchers, Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and James Reston Jr (Sam Rockwell).

They are horrified by Frost’s bounciness and, when the interviews start, his inability to ask tough questions. Zelnick and Reston suspect he is all too willing to be seduced by a ruthless manipulator.

The “revelation” in The Queen was that Elizabeth II is a misunderstood beacon of integrity, one who weeps in private about the fate of her rival, the glamorous, doomed Diana. As narrative inventions go, the one here is far more plausible. The Nixon we see does not blub over his glamorous, doomed rival JFK. Of course not.

Nixon is full of sorrow — sorrow for himself. The big scene in which he exposes his hidden depths is fuelled as much by narcissism as empathy.

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Langella conveys all this without seeming to try. He suggests that Dicky is tricky merely by making us conscious that this man is always conscious of how he appears. It’s apt that the one occasion on which he loses control is on the phone. Nixon keeps saying that he can’t perform for the cameras.Thanks to Langella’s sublime performance, we see for ourselves that this is not true.

Langella has already won lots of awards and should win more. It’s Evening Standard shortlisted Sheen, though, who pulls off the most magical of tricks: ensuring we become fascinated by a hollow man. His Frost is a himbo, an innocent diva as breathless and bewildered as Marilyn Monroe. At the same time, his toughness is not in doubt and his inscrutable smile, especially at the end, contains a shade of spite.

Some have suggested that the Sheen we see here is far too like the Sheen in The Queen. But surely the similarity is intentional. We are virtually being invited to note the obvious — that Frost could have been a politician, and Blair a TV host. We get the leaders — and light entertainers — we deserve.