Spring is beginning to stir in the cultural calendar, and this week’s television and film schedule offers a characteristically eclectic mix. Hollywood glamour arrives with the live broadcast of the 98th Academy Awards, while BBC Four revisits the influential 1990s drama This Life. Cinema lovers are also spoiled with everything from Cold War espionage to space survival, via musicals, psychological thrillers and one of the most extraordinary war films ever made.
What’s striking about this week’s selection is the sense of historical reflection. Several programmes look back at pivotal cultural moments—the making of The Graduate, the archaeological race to uncover ancient Egypt, and the enduring legacy of classic theatre through Hedda Gabler. At the same time, contemporary documentaries such as Inside the Rage Machine examine the forces shaping the modern world, particularly the influence of social media on public debate.
Among the highlights this week are Francis Ford Coppola’s mesmerising Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, the joyous political drama Pride, and the always watchable spectacle of the Oscars themselves. Whether your tastes lean toward classic cinema, thoughtful documentaries, or intelligent drama, there is plenty here to explore. Selections and previews and reviews are by Pat Harrington.
🌟 Highlights
🌟 Apocalypse Now — Film4, Friday 20 March
🌟 Pride — BBC Three, Tuesday 17 March
🌟 The Oscars Live — ITV1, Sunday 15 March
Saturday 14 March
The Race for Ancient Egypt in Colour — Channel 4, 7.15pm
This visually striking documentary revisits the great archaeological race to uncover the secrets of ancient Egypt, using colourised archival imagery to bring early discoveries vividly to life. The programme explores the rivalries between pioneering archaeologists and the international competition to uncover spectacular treasures buried for millennia.
The film is alert to the politics of excavation as well as its romance. It traces how European powers and their favoured scholars treated tombs and temples as trophies in a wider contest for prestige, often sidelining local voices and custodians in the process.
By foregrounding these tensions, the documentary quietly interrogates the colonial assumptions that shaped early Egyptology. It asks who gets to tell the story of a civilisation, and whose labour and knowledge are written out of the official record.
The colourisation work is more than a gimmick: it restores texture to images that have long circulated in monochrome, making the dust, stone and fabric feel newly present. That visual immediacy helps bridge the distance between the early twentieth century and now, reminding viewers that these were living landscapes, not just museum backdrops.
By combining historical insight with modern technology, the documentary offers a fresh perspective on one of humanity’s most enduring fascinations. It’s a thoughtful watch for anyone interested in how the past is constructed—and contested—in the present.
Queen Victoria and the Groomsman — Channel 5, 9.15pm
Few monarchs have inspired more speculation about their private lives than Queen Victoria. This documentary examines her famously close relationship with the Highland servant John Brown, a friendship that scandalised the Victorian court.
The film sifts through letters, diaries and contemporary accounts to separate gossip from evidence. What emerges is less a royal scandal than a portrait of mutual dependence: a widowed queen clinging to the one person who treated her as a human being rather than an institution.
Court insiders’ discomfort becomes a story in itself. Their snobbery and suspicion reveal how rigid class hierarchies struggled to accommodate a bond that crossed both rank and national identity, with Brown’s Scottishness coded as unruly and improper.
Visually, the programme leans into the contrast between Balmoral’s rugged landscapes and the suffocating etiquette of Windsor and London. That tension mirrors Victoria’s own divided existence, torn between duty and the desire for unvarnished companionship.
The result is a revealing portrait of Victoria not as an imperial symbol but as a grieving woman navigating loneliness after the death of Prince Albert. It’s a reminder that even the most mythologised figures are, at heart, people trying to survive their own losses.
Lies: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story — BBC Two, 9.15pm
This intriguing documentary explores the strange cultural territory between truth and invention. From elaborate hoaxes to embellished memoirs, it examines why audiences are often drawn to stories that later unravel as fiction.
The film is less interested in catching liars than in understanding believers. It shows how charisma, repetition and the desire for a neat narrative can override basic scepticism, especially when a story flatters our existing worldview.
Through case studies ranging from literary frauds to viral internet myths, the documentary maps the emotional rewards of being “in on” a compelling tale. It suggests that the shame of being duped often keeps people clinging to discredited narratives long after the evidence has collapsed.
In an age of viral misinformation, the film feels particularly relevant, asking how easily belief can be manipulated. It also raises uncomfortable questions about the media ecosystems that profit from outrage and sensation, even when the facts are shaky.
By the end, the documentary leaves viewers with a useful unease: a sense that critical thinking is not a luxury but a civic duty. It’s a brisk, engaging watch that lingers longer than its playful title suggests.
Sweet Charity (1969) — BBC Two, 12.05pm
Bob Fosse’s exuberant musical showcases Shirley MacLaine as Charity Hope Valentine, an optimistic dancer whose romantic dreams repeatedly collide with disappointment. The film balances dazzling choreography with moments of poignant vulnerability, revealing the loneliness beneath its showbiz sparkle.
Adapted from the stage musical (itself based on Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria), Sweet Charity relocates the story to New York’s dance halls and city streets. Fosse uses angular choreography and inventive camera work to turn musical numbers into psychological x‑rays, exposing Charity’s hopefulness as both her superpower and her Achilles heel.
MacLaine’s performance is the film’s beating heart. She plays Charity as a woman who knows she is being underestimated and patronised, yet refuses to surrender her belief that something better might be around the corner. That tension between self‑awareness and romantic delusion gives the film its bittersweet charge.
The supporting cast—including Chita Rivera and Sammy Davis Jr.—add texture and bite, particularly in set‑pieces like “Hey Big Spender” and the cult and my personal favouritefavourite “The Rhythm of Life” sequence. Fosse’s staging here feels like a bridge between classic Hollywood musical grammar and the more fragmented, modern style that would define the 1970s.
Visually inventive and emotionally engaging, Sweet Charity remains one of the most distinctive musicals of the late 1960s. It’s a film about a woman who keeps getting knocked down by a city that barely notices her—and about the stubborn, fragile courage it takes to keep getting back up.
The Ipcress File (1965) — BBC Two, 2.45pm
Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer offered a refreshing alternative to the glamorous spies of the era. A working‑class intelligence officer navigating Cold War intrigue, Palmer operates in a world of bureaucracy, suspicion and psychological manipulation.
Where James Bond swans through casinos and tropical islands, The Ipcress File traps its hero in fluorescent‑lit offices, grimy London streets and anonymous warehouses. The film’s espionage is rooted in paperwork, petty rivalries and the grinding paranoia of a state that barely trusts its own operatives.
Director Sidney J. Furie’s inventive camerawork reinforces that atmosphere of unease. Off‑kilter angles, obstructed frames and claustrophobic compositions make the audience feel as surveilled and disoriented as Palmer himself, particularly during the film’s brainwashing sequences.
Caine plays Palmer with sardonic understatement, his dry humour and culinary hobbies undercutting the genre’s usual macho posturing. He’s a civil servant who happens to carry a gun, not a fantasy of imperial swagger, and that groundedness has helped the film age remarkably well.
Intelligent and stylish, The Ipcress File remains one of the finest British espionage thrillers. It’s a reminder that the Cold War was as much about paperwork and psychology as it was about gadgets and glamour—and that the people caught in its machinery were often as expendable as the files they handled.
Little Big Man (1970) — Film4, 6.05pm
Arthur Penn’s revisionist western follows the extraordinary life story of Jack Crabb, played by Dustin Hoffman, who claims to have witnessed some of the most famous events of the American frontier. Blending satire with tragedy, the film dismantles traditional western mythology and exposes the violence behind the conquest of the West.
Framed as the testimony of a 121‑year‑old man, the film moves episodically through Jack’s shifting identities: white settler, adopted Cheyenne, scout, conman and reluctant participant in key historical atrocities. That structure allows Penn to puncture the heroic myths of frontier expansion from multiple angles.
The depiction of Native American characters, particularly Chief Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), is more humane than many contemporaries, though still filtered through Jack’s perspective. The film acknowledges the genocidal violence inflicted on Indigenous communities and treats their culture with a respect largely absent from earlier Hollywood westerns.
Tonally, Little Big Man walks a tightrope between broad comedy and devastating horror. Its humour—often at the expense of pompous cavalry officers and hypocritical preachers—makes the eventual eruptions of violence all the more shocking, underlining how quickly ideology can turn lethal.
It stands as a landmark of the New Hollywood era, when filmmakers began re‑examining America’s historical myths. Watching it now, the film feels like an early attempt at the kind of reckoning that is still very much unfinished.
Cabaret (1972) — BBC Two, 10.55pm
Bob Fosse’s dark musical masterpiece captures the decadence and political tension of Berlin in the early 1930s. Liza Minnelli’s unforgettable performance as Sally Bowles anchors a story set against the rising tide of Nazism.
The film cleverly confines almost all musical numbers to the Kit Kat Club stage, turning the cabaret into a kind of Greek chorus. As the songs grow more menacing and the audience more uniformed, the club becomes a barometer of a society sliding into authoritarianism while insisting it’s all just a bit of fun.
Minnelli’s Sally is a study in self‑invention and denial, a woman who performs her own life as relentlessly as she performs on stage. Her refusal to look beyond the next party or romance is both understandable and damning, a microcosm of a wider culture’s wilful blindness.
Fosse’s direction is razor‑sharp, using mirrors, tight framing and choreographed chaos to suggest a world where everyone is watching and being watched. The famous “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” sequence, set outside the club, lands like a slap—a reminder that the real danger is gathering in the daylight.
Stylish, unsettling and brilliant, Cabaret remains one of cinema’s greatest musicals. It’s a film about the stories people tell themselves to avoid seeing what’s coming—and about the terrible cost of that evasion.
New York, New York (1977) — BBC Two, 12.55am
Martin Scorsese’s ambitious homage to the Hollywood musical pairs Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli as volatile lovers navigating the post‑war jazz scene. The film blends stylised studio sets with the emotional intensity typical of Scorsese’s work.
On one level, New York, New York is a love letter to the MGM musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, with its painted backdrops, big band numbers and heightened artifice. On another, it’s a bruising portrait of a relationship corroded by ego, insecurity and the unequal space afforded to male and female ambition.
De Niro’s Jimmy is a gifted but deeply self‑absorbed saxophonist, while Minnelli’s Francine is a singer whose talent threatens his fragile sense of self. Their clashes over career, control and compromise feel painfully contemporary, even as the film wraps them in old‑Hollywood gloss.
Scorsese’s decision to let scenes run long, with overlapping dialogue and messy arguments, sometimes jarred audiences expecting a tighter, more conventional musical. Yet that looseness is part of the film’s power: it insists that emotional realism can coexist with stylised fantasy, even when the combination is uncomfortable.
Though divisive on release, New York, New York has since gained admiration for its bold ambition and unforgettable title song. It’s a film about how hard it is to share the spotlight—and about the cost, and freedom, of walking away from someone who can’t bear to see you shine.
Sunday 15 March
The Oscars Live — The 98th Academy Awards — ITV1, 10.15pm 🌟
Hollywood’s biggest night returns with the annual celebration of cinematic achievement. From glamorous red‑carpet arrivals to emotional acceptance speeches, the Oscars remain one of the entertainment industry’s grandest rituals.
While debates about winners and snubs are inevitable, the ceremony offers a fascinating snapshot of the year’s most influential films and performances. It’s also a barometer of industry anxieties and aspirations, from diversity pledges to the uneasy coexistence of streaming and theatrical releases.
For all its self‑importance, the Oscars still produce moments of genuine surprise and vulnerability: a veteran finally recognised, a newcomer overwhelmed, a speech that cuts through the platitudes. Those flashes of sincerity are what keep the ceremony compelling, even for viewers sceptical of awards culture.
The telecast is also a reminder of how globalised film culture has become. International nominees, transnational productions and worldwide audiences mean that the stories being honoured—and the politics around them—are no longer confined to Hollywood’s backyard.
For film lovers, it remains irresistible theatre: a flawed, overlong, occasionally chaotic ritual that nonetheless captures something of cinema’s enduring pull on the collective imagination.
Planes That Changed History: The Spitfire — National Geographic, 9pm
This documentary explores the design and impact of the legendary Spitfire fighter aircraft. The plane became a symbol of Britain’s resistance during the Second World War, particularly during the Battle of Britain.
By examining its engineering and wartime role, the programme reveals why the Spitfire remains one of aviation’s most iconic machines. It looks at how its elliptical wings, powerful Rolls‑Royce Merlin engine and manoeuvrability gave RAF pilots a crucial edge in the skies.
The film also pays attention to the human stories behind the hardware: the pilots who flew the aircraft, the ground crews who kept it operational, and the civilians who watched dogfights unfold above their homes. That blend of technical detail and personal testimony keeps the documentary grounded.
Archival footage and modern air‑to‑air photography work together to show the Spitfire in motion, emphasising both its elegance and its lethality. The programme doesn’t romanticise war, but it does acknowledge the emotional charge this particular machine still carries in British memory.
For viewers interested in military history or engineering, it’s a satisfying, accessible watch—and a reminder that technology is never neutral, but always entangled with the stories nations tell about themselves.
Janet Suzman Remembers Hedda Gabler — BBC Four, 10pm
followed by Hedda Gabler — 10.15pm
Janet Suzman reflects on her celebrated performance in the BBC’s 1972 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play. The drama itself remains a powerful portrayal of psychological conflict, centred on one of theatre’s most complex female characters.
The reminiscence programme offers a rare glimpse into the craft of serious television drama at a time when the BBC was still regularly adapting canonical plays for the small screen. Suzman’s recollections of rehearsal processes, directorial choices and the constraints of studio shooting add texture to the archive footage.
Hedda Gabler, with its tight focus on a woman trapped by social expectations and her own corrosive impulses, feels eerily modern. The production leans into the play’s claustrophobia, using close‑ups and confined sets to underline Hedda’s sense of entrapment.
Together, the documentary and drama provide a fascinating glimpse into the history of serious television theatre. They also invite viewers to consider how rare such ambitious, text‑driven productions have become in today’s schedule.
For anyone interested in performance, adaptation or the evolution of British TV drama, this double bill is a quietly precious opportunity to revisit a landmark role and the infrastructure that made it possible.
Howards End (1992) — Film4, 3.50pm
This elegant adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel examines class divisions in Edwardian England through the lives of three interconnected families. Emma Thompson’s Oscar‑winning performance anchors a story rich in social insight and emotional depth.
Directed by James Ivory and produced by Merchant Ivory, the film is a masterclass in controlled emotion and meticulous period detail. It uses houses, gardens and city streets as extensions of character, with the titular Howards End standing in for a more humane, if fragile, vision of Englishness.
The clash between the idealistic Schlegel sisters, the pragmatic Wilcoxes and the struggling clerk Leonard Bast lays bare the hypocrisies of a society that talks about culture and charity while preserving its own comfort. The film never lets its genteel surfaces obscure the economic brutality underneath.
Thompson’s Margaret Schlegel is the film’s moral centre, negotiating loyalty, compromise and self‑respect in a world that expects women to smooth over men’s damage. Her performance, alongside strong turns from Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Samuel West, gives the film its emotional heft.
Beautifully crafted, Howards End remains one of the finest literary adaptations of the 1990s. It’s a film about who gets to inherit not just property, but the future—and about the quiet revolutions that happen in drawing rooms as well as on picket lines.
Single White Female (1992) — Great TV, 9pm
A tense psychological thriller about a woman whose new roommate develops an increasingly disturbing obsession with her. The film captures early‑1990s anxieties about identity, privacy and urban life.
Bridget Fonda plays Allison, a New Yorker whose attempt to start afresh after a breakup leads her to share her flat with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s initially shy, then increasingly unhinged Hedy. The film mines the intimacy of shared domestic space for maximum unease, turning everyday objects into potential threats.
Leigh’s performance is the standout: she makes Hedy’s neediness and rage feel rooted in profound loneliness rather than mere genre villainy. That complexity gives the film a queasy empathy even as it leans into its more lurid set‑pieces.
Viewed now, Single White Female can feel dated in its treatment of mental illness and queer coding, but it remains a fascinating time capsule of pre‑internet fears about stolen identities and blurred boundaries. The idea that someone could quietly remake themselves in your image still lands, even if the technology has changed.
Stylish and unsettling, it has become a cult favourite. It’s best approached as both thriller and social artefact: a reminder of how cities, and the people who move through them, can be both refuge and threat.
The Martian (2015) — BBC Two, 10pm
Ridley Scott’s gripping survival drama follows an astronaut stranded on Mars who must rely on science and ingenuity to stay alive. Matt Damon brings humour and determination to the role, turning a desperate situation into a puzzle to be solved.
Adapted from Andy Weir’s novel, the film leans into the practicalities of survival: growing food in Martian soil, jury‑rigging equipment, calculating trajectories. That focus on problem‑solving gives the story an unusually optimistic tone for a space disaster movie.
Damon’s Mark Watney narrates much of his ordeal through video logs, which allows the film to balance technical exposition with characterful asides. His gallows humour and flashes of vulnerability keep the audience invested even when the narrative is essentially one man in a habitat tinkering with machinery.
Back on Earth, NASA’s attempts to rescue Watney provide a parallel story about institutional risk, public image and international cooperation. The film’s depiction of scientists and engineers as capable, fallible and fundamentally collaborative feels quietly radical in a culture that often sidelines such work.
Thrilling and optimistic, The Martian celebrates human resourcefulness in the face of impossible odds. It’s a rare blockbuster that makes you want to Google orbital mechanics afterwards, not because you have to, but because the film has made curiosity feel heroic.
Monday 16 March
Inside the Rage Machine — BBC Two, 9pm
Journalist Marianna Spring investigates how social media algorithms amplify anger and division online. The programme examines how digital platforms reward provocative content, often pushing users toward increasingly extreme viewpoints.
By talking to both platform insiders and people radicalised or harassed online, the documentary traces how design choices—what is promoted, what is hidden, what is monetised—shape the emotional climate of public debate. It makes clear that “the algorithm” is not a neutral force but a set of decisions with real‑world consequences.
The film also looks at the toll this environment takes on those working within it, including moderators and journalists who spend their days wading through abuse and disinformation. Their testimonies underline that the rage machine chews up workers as well as users.
It is a timely exploration of the forces shaping modern political discourse. Crucially, it resists the temptation to individualise blame, instead asking what regulatory, cultural and technological changes might be needed to dial down the temperature.
For anyone who has ever wondered why their feeds feel angrier than their real‑world conversations, this is essential, sobering viewing.
Imagine… Tracey Emin: Where Do You Draw the Line? — BBC Four, 10pm
This edition of the long‑running arts series explores the life and work of controversial British artist Tracey Emin. Her deeply personal artworks have provoked both admiration and outrage, raising questions about vulnerability and artistic confession.
The film traces Emin’s journey from Margate to international galleries, revisiting key works such as My Bed and her neon text pieces. It situates her within the Young British Artists generation while also acknowledging how singular her voice has remained.
Interviews with Emin are characteristically frank, touching on trauma, illness and the costs of turning one’s own life into material. The documentary doesn’t try to sand down her edges; instead, it lets her contradictions stand, trusting viewers to sit with the discomfort.
The programme also includes perspectives from critics and fellow artists, some admiring, some sceptical. That plurality of voices prevents the film from becoming hagiography, instead framing Emin as a lightning rod for debates about taste, class and what counts as “serious” art.
The result is a revealing portrait of one of Britain’s most distinctive contemporary artists. It’s particularly valuable for viewers who know the headlines but not the work, offering a chance to look again and perhaps see more.
Emin & Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed — BBC Four, 11.20pm
This programme explores the artistic dialogue between Tracey Emin and the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Despite their different eras and styles, both artists draw heavily on emotional intensity and personal experience.
Structured around an exhibition that placed Emin’s work alongside Munch’s, the film shows how themes of desire, loneliness, illness and mortality echo across their canvases and installations. It’s less about influence than resonance.
By juxtaposing Munch’s paintings with Emin’s drawings, sculptures and neons, the documentary invites viewers to consider how similar feelings find different formal expressions. The result is a kind of cross‑generational conversation about what it means to make art from pain.
The film offers a thoughtful meditation on how artists transform private feeling into universal expression. It also quietly challenges the idea that confessional art is somehow less rigorous or serious than more “distanced” work.
For those who have ever dismissed either artist as too melodramatic, this is a persuasive argument for looking again, more slowly.
The Secret Sex Lives of Tyrants — Sky History, 10pm
This provocative documentary series explores the private lives of history’s most notorious rulers. By examining rumours, relationships and scandals, it attempts to understand how power shaped their personal behaviour.
The series walks a fine line between prurience and analysis. At its best, it uses intimate histories to illuminate broader patterns: how authoritarian leaders treat bodies—especially women’s bodies—as extensions of their own entitlement and control.
There is, inevitably, a risk of sensationalism, and some viewers may find the tone too playful for the subject matter. Yet the programme does gesture towards the ways in which private abuses of power foreshadow or mirror public atrocities.
The result is an unusual blend of political biography and psychological speculation. It’s not definitive history, but as a starting point for thinking about the entanglement of sex, power and violence, it’s unsettling in useful ways.
Best watched with a critical eye and, ideally, a good history book within reach.
American Fiction (2023) — BBC Two, 12am
A sharp satire about a writer who becomes unexpectedly famous after producing a deliberately stereotypical novel. The film skewers cultural expectations within the publishing industry while exploring the contradictions of its protagonist.
Based on Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, American Fiction follows Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a frustrated Black author whose serious work is ignored while a clichéd, trauma‑laden manuscript he writes in anger becomes a runaway success. The premise allows the film to take aim at a market that demands certain kinds of “authenticity” while flattening the people it claims to champion.
The satire is at its most biting when it shows well‑meaning white gatekeepers falling over themselves to praise Monk’s parody, missing the joke entirely. Yet the film is equally interested in Monk’s own blind spots, particularly around his family and his reluctance to engage emotionally.
Witty and provocative, it offers a rare blend of comedy and cultural commentary. It asks who gets to define what counts as “Black literature” and at what cost, without pretending there are easy answers.
For viewers who enjoy their social critique with a side of awkward laughter, this is a smart, layered watch that lingers long after the credits.
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) — BBC One, 12.05am
This adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel follows Bathsheba Everdene and the three very different men who fall in love with her. The film captures Hardy’s themes of pride, independence and romantic misjudgement against the landscapes of rural England.
Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba is a quietly radical figure: a woman determined to run her own farm and make her own choices in a world that expects her to be ornamental. The film honours her complexity, allowing her to be wrong, selfish and brave by turns.
Director Thomas Vinterberg leans into the sensuality of the countryside—the wind in the barley, the creak of barns, the brutality of storms—to underline how closely human fortunes are tied to the land. That physicality keeps the romance from floating away into abstraction.
The three suitors—steadfast shepherd Gabriel Oak, impulsive Sergeant Troy and reserved landowner Boldwood—embody different models of masculinity, each with its own dangers and consolations. The film is clear‑eyed about the power imbalances at play, even when it indulges in swoon‑worthy imagery.
Romantic without becoming sentimental, it is a thoughtful literary adaptation. It’s particularly satisfying for viewers who want their period drama to acknowledge that desire and economics are never entirely separable.
Tuesday 17 March
Wild Rose (2018) — Film4, 9pm
Jessie Buckley shines in this moving drama about a Glasgow woman determined to become a country music star. The film balances humour with emotional honesty as its heroine struggles to reconcile ambition with family responsibilities.
Buckley’s Rose‑Lynn has just been released from prison when we meet her, ankle tag still visible as she dreams of Nashville from a Glasgow council estate. The film refuses to tidy her up: she is selfish, charismatic, often thoughtless, and utterly convincing.
Her relationship with her mother (a superb Julie Walters) provides the film’s emotional core. Their clashes over childcare, work and what constitutes a “realistic” dream speak to generational divides and the quiet heroism of women who stayed put so their children could imagine leaving.
The country music itself is not a joke but a lifeline. The film takes the genre seriously, showing how its stories of heartbreak, graft and redemption resonate far beyond the American South. When Rose‑Lynn finally sings in full flight, the catharsis feels earned rather than engineered.
A heartfelt and uplifting story anchored by Buckley’s remarkable performance, Wild Rose is a reminder that chasing a dream doesn’t always mean abandoning where you’re from—but it does require telling the truth about who you’ve hurt along the way.
Pride (2014) — BBC Three, 10.10pm 🌟
This joyful British film tells the true story of an unlikely alliance between LGBTQ activists and Welsh miners during the 1984 strike. By highlighting solidarity across cultural divides, the film captures the spirit of collective activism that defined the era.
Director Matthew Warchus and writer Stephen Beresford take what could have been a worthy history lesson and turn it into something far more alive: a comedy‑drama that understands both the absurdity and the necessity of coalition‑building. The culture clash between London activists and a small Welsh village is played for laughs without ever sneering at either side.
The ensemble cast—including Ben Schnetzer, George MacKay, Imelda Staunton, Paddy Considine and Bill Nighy—gives the film its warmth. Each character is allowed a small arc of courage, whether that’s coming out, standing up to neighbours or simply dancing in a working men’s club for the first time.
Pride doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the miners’ defeat or the looming shadow of AIDS, but it insists that joy and humour are part of resistance, not distractions from it. The scenes of shared singing and marching are as politically charged as any speech.
Warm, funny and deeply humane, Pride has become a modern British classic. It’s a film that leaves you with the sense that alliances are built not on abstract principles alone, but on cups of tea, shared jokes and the decision to show up for one another.
The Debt Collector (1999) — Film4, 1.10am
This gritty crime drama explores the shadowy world of professional debt collection. The film examines how financial desperation can push individuals toward morally ambiguous work.
Set in Glasgow, The Debt Collector follows a former law student who drifts into enforcing debts for a local hard man, discovering that the line between legal and illegal violence is thinner than he imagined. The city’s tenements and backstreets become a map of economic precarity.
The film is unsentimental about the damage inflicted on both sides of the door: the people being threatened and the men doing the threatening. It suggests that in a system built on inequality, brutality is not an aberration but a logical, if horrifying, outcome.
Bleak but compelling, it offers a stark portrait of life on the margins of legality. There are no easy redemptions here, only small, compromised choices about how much of one’s conscience can be salvaged.
For late‑night viewers with a taste for morally knotty crime stories, it’s a tough, worthwhile watch.
Wednesday 18 March
Daniela Nardini Remembers This Life — BBC Four, 10pm
followed by This Life — 10.15pm
Daniela Nardini reflects on the influential BBC drama that captured the chaotic lives of young professionals in 1990s London. When it first aired, This Life broke with television conventions through its candid portrayal of relationships and ambition.
The reminiscence programme revisits how the series’ handheld camerawork, overlapping dialogue and frank treatment of sex, drugs and sexuality felt genuinely radical at the time. Nardini’s memories of playing Anna, and of the show’s cult following, underline how rare it was to see messy, recognisably flawed twenty‑somethings on British TV.
Revisiting the series reveals how profoundly it influenced modern British drama, from Skins to Fleabag and beyond. Its focus on friendship groups as surrogate families, and on work as both identity and trap, still feels painfully current.
For viewers who grew up with This Life, this double bill offers a hit of nostalgia with teeth. For newcomers, it’s a chance to see where much of today’s “edgy” drama learned its tricks.
Nobody (2021) — Film4, 9pm
Bob Odenkirk plays a seemingly ordinary suburban father whose violent past resurfaces after a home invasion. The film combines dark humour with explosive action sequences.
Directed by Ilya Naishuller and written by John Wick co‑creator Derek Kolstad, Nobody takes the “retired assassin” template and injects it with a weary, middle‑aged absurdity. Odenkirk’s Hutch is less sleek killing machine than man who has spent years pretending to be harmless—and is slightly alarmed to discover how much he enjoys dropping the act.
The action set‑pieces, particularly an early bus fight, are choreographed with bone‑crunching clarity and a streak of slapstick. The film never quite lets you forget that bodies break and bleed, even as it revels in the choreography.
There’s a faintly reactionary fantasy at work—the emasculated dad reclaiming his potency through violence—but Odenkirk’s self‑deprecating performance and the film’s willingness to laugh at its own excesses keep it from curdling.
Lean and entertaining, Nobody offers a fresh twist on the revenge thriller. It’s the rare action film that understands the comic potential of a man carefully putting on his reading glasses before a brawl.
Beast (2017) — Film4, 10.50pm
Set on the island of Jersey, this atmospheric thriller follows a troubled young woman drawn into a relationship with a man suspected of murder. The story keeps viewers uncertain about guilt and innocence until the very end.
Jessie Buckley (again proving she’s one of the most interesting actors of her generation) plays Moll, whose suffocating family life makes the dangerous freedom offered by Johnny (Johnny Flynn) all the more intoxicating. The island’s cliffs, fields and isolated lanes become extensions of her psyche: beautiful, treacherous, hard to escape.
Director Michael Pearce uses the murder investigation less as a whodunnit than as a pressure cooker for questions about female anger, class and the stories communities tell about “good” and “bad” women. Moll’s own capacity for violence complicates any easy victim/perpetrator divide.
Moody and psychologically complex, Beast is a striking debut feature. It’s the kind of film that leaves you arguing with yourself about what you’ve just seen—and about how much you wanted certain characters to be innocent, regardless of the evidence.
For viewers who like their thrillers morally murky and thick with atmosphere, this is a must.
Thursday 19 March
Classic Movies: The Story of The Graduate — Sky Arts, 9pm
This documentary revisits the making of the 1967 classic that captured the restless spirit of a generation. Through interviews and archival material, it explores how director Mike Nichols transformed a modest novel into a cultural landmark.
The film digs into casting battles, studio nerves and the creative decisions that gave The Graduate its distinctive tone: part satire, part melancholy coming‑of‑age story. Dustin Hoffman’s unlikely leading‑man status and Anne Bancroft’s iconic Mrs Robinson are treated as the risks they were at the time, not the inevitabilities they now seem.
The documentary also considers the film’s use of Simon & Garfunkel’s music, which helped cement the idea of pop songs as emotional commentary rather than mere background. The way “The Sound of Silence” and “Mrs. Robinson” interact with Benjamin’s drift through post‑college ennui still feels sharp.
The film’s themes of alienation and rebellion continue to resonate decades later, and the documentary doesn’t shy away from asking how its gender politics and racial blind spots play now. That willingness to re‑interrogate a classic is part of what makes the programme worthwhile.
For cinephiles, it’s a satisfying blend of behind‑the‑scenes gossip and serious analysis; for casual viewers, it may well send you back to the original with fresh eyes.
Ad Astra (2019) — Film4, 6.40pm
Brad Pitt stars in this introspective science‑fiction drama about an astronaut searching for his missing father at the edge of the solar system. Director James Gray blends space spectacle with philosophical reflection.
Ad Astra imagines a near‑future where the solar system has been partially colonised, yet human emotional dysfunction remains stubbornly unresolved. Pitt’s Roy McBride is a man prized for his calm under pressure, whose emotional detachment is both professional asset and personal wound.
The journey outward—to the Moon, Mars and beyond—mirrors an inward excavation of grief, anger and inherited masculinity. Tommy Lee Jones, as Roy’s absent, obsessive father, embodies a particular kind of patriarchal scientist‑explorer who sacrifices everything, and everyone, to the mission.
Visually stunning and emotionally reflective, the film is less interested in hard science than in the loneliness of men raised to see vulnerability as failure. Its set‑pieces—a lunar rover chase, a distress call gone wrong—are thrilling, but the moments that linger are quieter: a recorded message, a hand on glass.
For viewers expecting a conventional space adventure, Ad Astra may feel slow; for those open to a more meditative orbit, it’s a haunting, oddly tender experience.
Friday 20 March
Blanca — More4, 9pm
This stylish Italian detective drama centres on a blind consultant whose heightened senses help solve complex cases. The series combines strong character development with compelling mysteries.
Blanca avoids turning its protagonist’s blindness into either a superpower or a tragedy. Instead, it treats her as a fully rounded character whose disability shapes her experience without defining her entirely, weaving in questions of access, prejudice and autonomy alongside the procedural plots.
Atmospheric and intelligent, it continues the tradition of sophisticated European crime drama. For viewers who enjoy character‑driven mysteries with a strong sense of place, it’s well worth sampling.
The Small Back Room (1949) — Talking Pictures, 10.40am
Powell and Pressburger’s wartime drama follows a troubled scientist working on bomb‑disposal technology during the Second World War. The film focuses on psychological pressure rather than battlefield spectacle.
David Farrar’s Sammy Rice is a limping, alcoholic boffin whose work on defusing new German booby‑traps is complicated by bureaucratic interference and his own self‑loathing. The film is unusually frank, for its time, about disability, addiction and the corrosive effects of feeling surplus to requirements.
Quietly powerful, it reveals the emotional toll of war behind the scenes. A bravura sequence in which Sammy attempts to defuse a bomb on a shingle beach is as tense as any frontline combat scene, precisely because it is so stripped of spectacle.
For those who know Powell and Pressburger mainly for their Technicolor fantasies, this is a darker, more subdued but no less distinctive work.
In Camera (2023) — BBC Two, 11.10pm
A striking drama about a struggling actor navigating the brutal realities of the audition process. The film explores identity, ambition and the emotional cost of constant rejection.
In Camera follows Aden, a British‑Iraqi actor whose attempts to secure work are repeatedly derailed by typecasting, microaggressions and the industry’s hunger for “authentic” trauma. The film uses surreal, looping audition scenes to convey how dehumanising it can be to perform versions of yourself for other people’s approval.
Sharp and unsettling, it offers a fresh perspective on the performing profession. It’s less about the glamour of acting than about the psychic wear and tear of being looked at, judged and found wanting.
For anyone who has ever sat in a waiting room rehearsing a version of themselves they hope will be acceptable, this will land with particular force.
Apocalypse Now (1979) — Film4, 11.10pm 🌟
Francis Ford Coppola’s extraordinary Vietnam War epic follows Captain Willard on a surreal journey upriver to confront the rogue Colonel Kurtz. Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the film becomes a haunting meditation on power, madness and the moral chaos of war.
From its opening montage of napalm and The Doors’ “The End”, Apocalypse Now announces itself as something more feverish than a conventional war film. The further upriver Willard travels, the more the narrative fragments into set‑pieces that feel like stations on a descent into collective insanity.
Visually spectacular and philosophically unsettling, the film uses light, shadow and sound to create a sense of dislocation that mirrors the soldiers’ own. Helicopters swoop to Wagner, flares turn night into hellish day, and the jungle seems to close in as both setting and metaphor.
The film has rightly been criticised for centring American anguish while rendering Vietnamese characters largely voiceless. Yet as a portrait of an imperial power losing its mind, it remains devastatingly effective, particularly in its depiction of how violence becomes both banal and sacred to those who wield it.
Apocalypse Now is one of the most powerful films ever made not because it offers answers, but because it refuses to pretend that war can be neatly understood. It leaves you with images and sounds you can’t quite shake—and with the uneasy sense that the river it charts runs through more than one conflict, and more than one century.
Streaming Choice
Netflix — Beauty in Black (Season 2 Part 2)
Available Thursday 19 March
Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black returns with the second half of its second season, continuing the saga of Kimmie, an exotic dancer whose life becomes entangled with the powerful Bellarie cosmetics dynasty. Now married to patriarch Horace and installed as a senior figure in the family business, Kimmie must navigate shifting alliances, corporate power struggles and the fallout from a devious trafficking scheme that has shadowed the family’s rise. The new episodes promise more boardroom manoeuvring, family betrayal and hard‑won self‑assertion as Kimmie fights to protect her loved ones and claim her place in a world that never expected her to survive, let alone lead.
Netflix — The Plastic Detox
Available Monday 16 March
The Plastic Detox is an environmental documentary series that looks at how deeply single‑use plastics have infiltrated everyday life, from supermarket aisles to bathroom cabinets. Each episode follows households, businesses and communities as they attempt to reduce their reliance on plastic, revealing both the structural obstacles and the small, practical changes that can add up to meaningful reductions. Expect a mix of scientific explanation, consumer‑level advice and a clear‑eyed look at how much responsibility can realistically be placed on individuals versus corporations and policymakers. It’s a quietly galvanising watch for anyone who has ever stood in front of a recycling bin wondering how much difference their choices really make.
Paramount+ — The Naked Gun
Available Sunday 15 March
The Naked Gun remains one of the great anarchic spoof comedies, following Leslie Nielsen’s magnificently inept detective Frank Drebin as he stumbles through a plot to assassinate the Queen during a visit to Los Angeles. The film’s barrage of sight gags, deadpan one‑liners and cheerfully stupid set‑pieces still lands, not least because Nielsen plays it all with the gravity of a man in a serious thriller. Beneath the chaos, there’s a surprisingly affectionate send‑up of cop‑show clichés and American pomp. For anyone in need of something silly, tightly paced and blissfully uninterested in good taste, it’s a welcome addition to the streaming line‑up.
Prime Video — Prey
Available Tuesday 17 March
Prey is a lean, gripping reinvention of the Predator franchise, set in the early 18th century and centred on Naru, a young Comanche woman determined to prove herself as a hunter. When an otherworldly predator begins stalking the plains, her skills and instincts are tested against a foe far beyond anything her community has faced. The film’s commitment to Indigenous casting and perspective, its use of landscape, and its stripped‑back storytelling make it feel both fresh and rooted in a specific cultural context. It’s a rare franchise entry that deepens the original premise while standing confidently on its own.
Fringe 2026: The First Rumblings Begin
Even though it’s only March and Edinburgh is still wrapped in its late‑winter grey, the first tremors of Fringe season have already begun. The 2026 festival runs 7–31 August, but—as ever—the city’s venues don’t wait for summer to start beating the drum. Announcements are landing in careful waves, each one sketching the early outline of what August might become. We’ve already begun our coverage with the new Night Owl Shows at theSpace, and with Summerhall’s first salvo of international, politically alive work. What’s emerging is that familiar, thrilling sense of a festival waking up: artists clearing their throats, programmers placing their early bets, and audiences beginning to imagine the shape of the month ahead. It’s the long runway before the annual take‑off, and it’s always one of the most revealing parts of the year.
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