Roald Dahl's Esio Trot

Roald Dahl's Esio Trot (2015) is a British romantic comedy you can watch online on iFILM. It stars Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench, with James Corden narrating.

Shy bachelor Mr Hoppy (Hoffman) has quietly loved his downstairs neighbour Mrs Silver (Dench) for years, but he's never worked up the nerve to ask her over for tea. The widow only has eyes for her tortoise, Alfie, whom she frets is growing far too slowly. So Hoppy cooks up a sweet little scam: he buys a hundred tortoises in gradually bigger sizes and swaps them in one by one, passing off a nonsense spell — "esio trot," tortoise spelled backwards — as the magic behind it.

Adapted from Roald Dahl's novella, the film rests entirely on the Hoffman-and-Dench pairing, with Corden framing it all as a bedtime tale for grown-ups. Eighty-seven minutes of cozy, slightly old-fashioned charm — the kind of thing you put on for a quiet night in. Stream Roald Dahl's Esio Trot (2015) online on iFILM.