Wandering a little off my usual media beat, I have devoted my London Evening Standard column today to the British film industry.

I was taken with this week's release of the report entitled A future for British film – it begins with the audience, which was the result of deliberations by a review panel chaired by Lord (Chris) Smith.

Its stress on the need for Britain to produce a wide range of films "from the overtly commercial to the overtly arty and much in-between" was at odds with the view expressed the previous week by prime minister David Cameron (brilliantly lampooned by Charlie Brooker, incidentally).

Cameron wants to see more commercial successes, such as The King's Speech. Well, that's understandable. Obviously, we don't want to produce guaranteed failures.

But serious films that have not been box office smashes - such as We Must Talk About Kevin - deserve backing too. Perhaps we need to talk about David!