Colin Farrell delivers a career-best turn in this pointed, witty and allegorical fable which unfolds on a fictional Irish island in 1923. It sets a feud between two friends against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War, raging audibly on the mainland. Writer-director Martin McDonagh follows the Oscar-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri with a film told in a more minor key but that’s still outstandingly executed.

Farrell stars as the simple-minded donkey-lover Pádraic, who is left reeling at the outset when his best mate Colm (Farrell’s In Bruges co-star Brendan Gleeson) breaks up with him. Colm’s reasoning? With his lack of cultural nous and unselfconscious obsessions, Pádraic is suffocatingly dull. Refusing to accept the situation, Pádraic won’t leave Colm be, and his former friend resorts to drastic action to persuade him he’s serious. Pádraic’s much smarter sister Siobhan (lovely work from Kerry Condon) supports him through the turmoil, as does Barry Keoghan’s Dominic, the only person on the island regarded as being less bright.

McDonagh initially plays things purely for laughs, and there’s an abundance of those, with the film amping up the absurdity of island-life in a Father Ted-esque way, poking fun at the reliance on routines and hunger for gossip. If Farrell has a nice line in flabbergasted and Keoghan matches him for comedic flair, then Gleeson’s role is straighter, with Colm like an immovable object against which Pádraic puffs and pants as he tries to get him to change his position.

There are shades here of Calvary, that marvellous film from Martin’s brother John Michael, yet The Banshees Of Inisherin wins you over in its own way. There’s plenty pathos in Pádraic’s predicament (watching him suffer is rather like watching a puppy get kicked), but for all its comedy you really do care about these characters. 

The Banshees Of Inisherin is in cinemas from Friday 21 October.