Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts, the writer/director/actor's follow-up to 2010's ** Happythankyoumoreplease**, tickled crowds at Sundance London last year and should repeat the trick when it gets a UK cinema release next week. For one thing, as this new clip shows, it's got Allison Janney in it; a fact that automatically earns it an MA (Hons) in general excellence.
Janney plays the hard-bitten English tenured professor in the small liberal arts college once attended by Jesse Fisher, Radnor's 30-something admissions professor. Acutely aware of his advancing years but still smitten like a teenager, Fisher fawns on his old don. In return, she treats him with very un-C.J. Cregg-like disdain.
Will they bond over Stendhal or just catch up on old times? On this evidence, probably neither. Throw Elizabeth Olsen's sassy sophomore and a mentor played with wry weariness by Richard Jenkins into the mix, and Jesse's nostalgic return to his old college threatens to become something a lot more complex.
Liberal Arts is in cinemas from October 5.