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Lots of stuff next week. jlnight has noted one of the big US premieres of the week with Where The Crawdads Sing on Channel 4 at 9:15 p.m. on Saturday 5th. Tucked away on the ITV2 channel at 3:40 p.m. on Sunday 6th is the premiere of Sonic The Hedgehog 2.

Sam Mendes is all over the place at the moment, with the repeat of his 1996 production of Company showing last Sunday and today's unveiling of the cast of his upcoming Beatles biopic all over the evening news. Next week has a real curio with Mendes unveiling a 40 minute documentary about the Bergan-Belsen concentration camps What They Found on BBC2 at 10 p.m. on Monday 7th.

The Matt Damon starring Stillwater is showing on Film4 at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 9th (dark 'n' moody version of a famous tune ahoy!), although I will be forgoeing that one for something else that clashes with it in the hopes it gets repeated later on. Film4 has another premiere in the form of Mexican teacher drama Radical at 11:40 p.m. on Thursday 10th, which unfortunately I will also be foregoing because its final 20 minutes somehow manages to clash with the final episode of the Common Side Effects series over on E4 at 2 a.m.!
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Repeat-wise both Your Name (at 1:55 a.m. in the early hours of Sunday 6th) and Weathering With You (at 1:20 a.m. in the early hours of Monday 7th) get another showing on Film4. Ron's Gone Wrong gets its first un-DOG-tagged showing on Film4 at 12:40 p.m. on Sunday 6th.

BBC4's 'archive television' strand has an excellent week with 1986's first episode of Artists and Models showing at 10:15 p.m. on Monday 7th (with an introduction from historian David Olusoga at 10 p.m.), that unfortunately clashes with the above mentioned What They Found over on BBC2 at the same time. At 10 p.m. on Wednesday 9th (clashing with Stillwater over on Film4) Janet Suzman (who plays Joan of Arc in the play) introduces the 1965 David Warner starring production of The Wars of the Roses: Henry VI.

And on BBC2 at 11 p.m. on Friday 11th there is a repeat of Licorice Pizza.

Also worth mentioning, on the archive TV front: on Sunday 6th alongside An Evening with Howard Keel, BBC4 are showing Kiss Me Kate. Not the feature film but a 90-minute TV production made for BBC2's opening night in 1964, with Patricia Morison co-starring with Keel. This appears to be its first broadcast since a repeat in April 1965.

I had completely missed the Howard Keel night, so thanks for the notification GaryC!

I did also catch Zero on television last night, and it is quite interesting to evaluate in the wake of all of the controversy currently occurring in the wake of the main character of Adolescence becoming a governmental darling and apparently directly influencing government policy (which ignores certain other, arguably more pressing, issues to focus in on young white male incels, online misogyny and namechecking Andrew Tate as the most pressing concerns that society has to face), because as that brief Film London comment from the director notes, this takes place in a "20 years future" Britain where, for some inexplicable reason (i.e. with any suggestion of why it happened purposefully ignored) after a sudden civil war society has collapsed and young girls are being used for currency and have to take brutally probing 'purity' tests before being given permission (by "Men" of course) to travel from sector to sector of the country.

Yes, its kind of a modern take on The Handmaid's Tale, although with the social class element stripped out. Or a bit like a John Wyndham novel without any context of the wider society. Here the young teenage girl and her even younger pre-teen sister are stuck into various kind of camps, from which the older girl constantly escapes upon being awakened to the brutalities going on within each one. The first is the most brutal, when after a send off from her (black) boyfriend on the other side of a barbed wire fence, the older sister is raped by a random 'Man' in a stairwell of the brutalist tower blocks being used to house all the women. She has obviously lost her 'purity card' by that point, through no fault of her own, and after the jump of a month or two later upon starting to get morning sickness (and after a group of white men, including her brother, force her to urinate in front of them so they can check it), she grabs her sister and tries to escape the compound.

Much of the rest of the film is a chase, with many captures and releases going on, as the brother is ambivalent over his allegiance to his family, or to his society. I do like that the younger sister is continually being protected from understanding the brutalities of the world by the older sister, but that leads to the younger sister also kind of initially blaming the older sister for ruining the new lives they were about to lead by having gotten pregnant, without understanding that it was not particularly by choice! That relationship dynamic is the most interesting part of the film (particularly when the younger sister makes the fateful choice to reveal herself to the brother, thereby blowing their third escape attempt!), and there is a particularly queasy extended section when the younger and older sister get separated and the younger is taken into a brothel area with a group of other girls of various ages all dressed in virginal white and handed over to a guy, which takes it all the way up to the limits of what could possibly acceptably happen until the older sister comes in to break things up (the image of a smaller child-like hand clutched in the fist of a larger male one is the key image of the film, which is the central image focused on in the stairwell rape of the older sister; and which then gets its paired moment in the younger sister's hand being clutched and unwillingly pulled towards the crotch of the man in the brothel).

After that chunk of the film, and the escape and running (in)to the brother leads even the brother to become a pariah and be permanently banished from the compound, we get to a particularly Wyndham-esque more 'cozy' lighthouse commune, with the building inhabited by the women with the (more ethnically diverse than the white hoodies that have populated the film up to this point) men standing guard in tents outside. But the older sister even wants to escape this for the mythical 'Mainland' that their lost Father once told them about, and again dragging the younger sister with her makes another escape to a small boat, has another showdown with the brother (who being a Man has to be left behind, and face the, presumably executable, consequences for an escape having occurred), whilst the women leave the shores of England for better pastures. Which feels like it both references the end of Children of Men (and the putative plans of the main characters in The Kraken Wakes!), but also feels tremendously naive as a metaphor in itself, in the idea that, whilst not directly named, the shores of France will prove to be any better, or any less Patriarchal.

(Which kind of makes this a veiled pro-EU film too? But also the most fascinating, and perhaps the most tragic of all, aspect of the film is that, in placing a bit more focus on the brother being torn between his 'duties' to his male tribe versus his blood ties to his sisters, it never really acknowledges the bigger underlying idea that the older sister herself is never free of the 'Male Gaze' within even her own head. Even the bookends to a lost childhood occurs through memories of their lost Father; and the need to leave for greener pastures at the end is still trying to achieve the mythical idea of protection from the outside world that Daddy had initially tried, and failed, at doing for the two girls)

Anyway, its an interesting piece of (masochistic wish fulfilmment?) dystopian future sci-fi, but probably should be taken with a tremendous pinch of salt. Maybe best watched together in a double bill with Welcome II The Terrordome which is weighted towards all of the racial politics aspects to its own similarly rather manufactured and partial dystopian fantasy that Zero is consciously downplaying to privilege the female experience of male abuse above all.

(And I was also left wondering if the title, and name of the main character, Zero was an intentional reference back to the 70s sci-fi film that focused on female reproductive rights and urges, Z.P.G. - Zero Population Growth, or if that is too obscure of a reference to impose!)

The Fortune Cookie, Sat 12th Apr, Sky Arts.
Three Crooked Men, Sat 12th Apr, Talking Pictures.
Drop Zone, Sat 12th Apr, Legend.
Dead Man's Shoes, Sat 12th Apr, Film4. (on before)

What's Good for the Goose, Sun 13th Apr, Together TV. (last on TPTV)
The Hunted (1998 TVM), Sun 13th Apr, Legend.

Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story, late Tue 15th Apr, Sky Arts.

Apache Uprising, Wed 16th Apr, Legend. Or...
The Capture (1950), Wed 16th Apr, Talking Pictures. (Saddle Up)
The Vourdalak, late Wed 16th Apr, Film4.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Thu 17th Apr, Sky Arts. (last on Legend)

King Kong (1976), Fri 18th Apr, Legend.
Doomwatch: The Iron Doctor + Catacombs (1965), Fri 18th Apr, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club) Or...
Intimate Games, Fri 18th Apr, Together TV. (last on London Live) Or...
Fall (2022), Fri 18th Apr, BBC1.

Rather scary stuff next week. jlnight has noted two of the premieres of the week, but the other one (which along with Sonic The Hedghog 2 is proving that we are in the middle of the school Easter holidays) is The Bad Guys showing on ITV1 at 1:40 p.m. on Sunday 13th (the first premiere on ITV1 of the year!) Dark 'n' moody backing song ahoy!

The most interesting looking film of the week is French horror The Vourdalak showing on Film4 at Midnight late Wednesday 16th/early Thursday 17th. Which is a feature length version of the same story that was the basis of the Boris Karloff starring segment of Mario Bava's anthology film Black Sabbath.

Then on Good Friday BBC1 is showing Fall at 10:30 p.m. - I quite like this film (a much better film than the similarly themed 'survival against the odds' film The Shallows - just with sharks replaced with heights - and also extremely similar to 47 Meters Down, although to say why would be a major spoiler), but I do have a strong suspicion that it is a film highly influenced by internet videos (plus Tomb Raider 2013's radio tower sequence) and however intense they make a fictional film it just cannot compare with the sweaty palm feeling of actual (and free climbing) viral videos such as those by the On The Roofs guys, and especially the one that probably started it all, the terrifying Climbing Towers video.
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Repeat-wise, not too much. The second David Mackenzie and Ewan McGregor collaboration, 2011's Perfect Sense is showing on BBC2 at 12:30 a.m. in the early hours of Monday 14th, the second in a 'smelly' double bill with Scent of a Woman showing earlier at 10 p.m. - Perfect Sense has probably been unbroadcastable for the last few years, for certain reasons, so it is nice to see it again. Though I do like Mackenzie-McGregor's first collaboration, the even more rarely shown (and just as Scottish!) Young Adam from 2003 more.

Film4 is showing Tombstone at 9 p.m. on Tuesday 15th as a tribute to Val Kilmer.

BBC4's archive television of the week is a showing of the first two episodes of the Jimmy McGovern-written 1997 series The Lakes along with a 15 minute introduction from McGovern from 10 p.m. on Wednesday 16th. McGovern started off writing episodes of Channel 4's gritty soap Brookside, and had a history of 'dark n gritty' dramas, particularly creating and writing the Robbie Coltrane Cracker crime drama series for ITV. Before The Lakes he'd written the 1994 film Priest for director Atonia Bird. Unfortunately that clashes with The Vourdalak over on Film4 at the same time.

Alice in Wonderland (1966 BBC), Sun 20th Apr, Talking Pictures.
Priscilla (2023), Sun 20th Apr, BBC2.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Mon 21st Apr, Sky Arts.
A Town Like Alice (1956), Mon 21st Apr, Talking Pictures.
Accident (1967), Mon 21st Apr, Talking Pictures. (last on London Live)

The Artifice Girl, Tue 22nd Apr, Film4.

My Outlaw Brother, Wed 23rd Apr, Talking Pictures. (Saddle Up)

Death Wish (1974), Thu 24th Apr, Legend.

Doomwatch: Flight Into Yesterday + The Nightcomers, Fri 25th Apr, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)



Fantastic Planet was in French with English subs. For some reason I assumed they would use the English dub!

The Nightcomers is presumably the Michael Winner-helmed prequel story to The Turn of the Screw/The Innocents (i.e. the Wide Sargasso Sea to Jane Eyre) telling the story of the torrid love affair that leads into the ghost situation from the Henry James story. If you have ever wanted to see Marlon Brando meet his match up against Thora Hird's housekeeper (where was that version of Last Tango In Paris!), then this is the film!

Lots of Disney films over the Easter weekend. Lightyear is showing on BBC1 at 5:40 p.m. on Saturday 19th, which was controversial (though nowhere near the Mulan remake or causing the ructions of more recent Disney productions) for apparently having a brief lesbian kiss in it near the end, though I think the people who would have been objecting to that had already been riled up by Tim Allen being replaced as the voice of Buzz by Chris Evans. On Easter Monday BBC1 shows Tim Burton's 2019 live action/CGI remake of Dumbo at 7:20 p.m.

The biggest film of the week is Sofia Coppola's Priscilla showing on BBC2 on Easter Sunday at 10 p.m. And Film4 has the oddity of the week with The Artifice Girl showing at 9 p.m. on Tuesday 22nd.
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Repeat-wise, Titane is showing on Film4 at 1:50 a.m. in the early hours of Sunday 20th; Nine to Five is showing on BBC2 on Easter Monday at 10 p.m.; episodes 3 & 4 of Jimmy McGovern's series The Lakes show in BBC4's 'archive television' strand at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 23rd (though BBC4's schedules are likely going to be thrown out of the window for all of next week as they are showing the World Snooker Championships at the Sheffield Crucible througout the early evenings, which notoriously has a tendency to overrun multiple hours!); and Carol Reed's 1953 film The Man Between shows on Film4 at 11 a.m. on Friday 25th.

Watching Fall again last night I really do still think it is both of a piece with and the best of the run of 'woman in extreme environments' thrillers along with The Shallows and 47 Meters Down (weirdly both enriched by seeing the earlier films, and a bit damaged too because you can see how iterative the basic plot is, where there is only a limited amount of things to do to spin an anecdote out into a feature length run time), but wanted to go into a little bit more depth whilst it was fresh in my mind. It will mainly be in the spoiler section, but I had forgotten just how Fall does a couple of exact plot beats from The Shallows in a much better way. The main one is that the heroine being worried about the surfers stealing her stuff whilst she is out on her board, which then gets confirmed by the drunken Mexican stealing her stuff later on turns up in Fall but with the iffy racial 'indigenous natives preying on tourists, with only nature in the form of a giant shark being able to take revenge!' undertone to it getting exchanged for a (still somewhat iffy, but more fuzzy) couple of ne'er do well wastrels (who Hunter jokes are probably gay, because two people of the same gender just hanging out have to be, right?) who see the girls trapped on top of the tower and use it as an opportunity to steal their car, thereby removing any trace of the girls' presence from the surrounding area!

There is also the mid-point section of having to fight off wildlife attracted to the stranded person, in Fall's case being vultures rather than sharks. Though similar to The Shallows (and 47 Meters Down for that matter) they're attracted for spoilery reasons!

And Fall also does the 'estranged from daddy' thing in a much more fleshed out way than The Shallows, where the girl kind of has to sacrifice her tomboy-ish best friend's pushy advice to be independent (whatever the friend's voiceover closing out the film says) to reconnect with her dad again after having pushed him away from so long. Blake Lively in The Shallows never seems to have realised the importance of not just going it alone all the time, and indeed has her feisty independence confirmed by that film, whilst in Fall the main girl both has to self-motivate, but with a goal of returning from a solitary existence back to other people again.

Now into spoilers, though before doing so I would acknowledge that the opening mountain climbing scene, especially the shots looking straight down, are done with CGI which both spoils that somebody is going to fall to their death (the way that obvious optical shots used to do in pre-CGI movies, because they're preparing for an 'event' to occur) and look extremely poor. So I wonder if that opening scene was a late addition, or all of the CGI shots of the tower took up most of the effects budget? Anyway, on to where Fall takes more cues from 47 Meters Down:

Spoilers for Fall and 47 Metres Down

in one of the two girls in the situation dying at a certain point, but the main girl is driven so crazy by the loss she hallucinates the other girl still being alive, until the moment when she has to pull herself together and acknowledge the reality of the situation in order to survive. Whilst 47 Meters Down saves this for a late-on twist, and the protagonist of that film really does not have much agency to do anything but just endure until help arrives, in Fall I really like the way they use this idea. The main girl's friend Hunter has always been the pushy one in the situation, the confident and unflappable one with all the plans and motivational dialogue to push Becky further and further up the tower in order to confront her fears. Once Hunter miraculously 'survives' her fall to the hanging bag she continues to motivate Becky with a lot of the same dialogue of the "Yeah! You can do it! Go Becks! Whooo!" ilk, especially in the sequence of Becky having to climb the pole even higher to recharge the drone which immediately follows, but I really like the way that there is always an edge to the dialogue at that point. Some of it feels intentionally badly ADR'd or looping yells of encouragement, which makes sense when looking back as all occurring in Becky's head as she is semi-consciously still using her dead friend's platitudes as motivations to keep doing the impossible. Sometimes being delusional can be an actual beneficial coping mechanism, if it gives you the ability to press forward rather than just collapsing into despair and giving up entirely.

I could have managed without the awfully shoehorned in section about Hunter having cheated on Becky with her husband (the guy who died at the opening of the film) and them having a fight but reconcilliation about it before Hunter's fatal fall. But I can let it go as something that just needs to happen to add drama and an extra ten minutes to the film! (I do however love that moment early on when on getting to the top of the tower Becky sprinkles her husband's ashes, but Hunter is the one who cries the most - leave that in as an implication of something having happened, just don't make it explicit by having to turn it into a big plot point with a shot of Becky noticing Hunter looking grumpy in the background of one of her wedding pictures on her phone leading to the revelation! Leaving it as an implication would also have given us as audience members something to speculate on after the film too!) Plus it also kind of removes any tension by underlining that Hunter's goose is cooked from that point on, as despite vociferous apologies and a make up scene, she kind of has to now die for her transgressions in the moral terms of a thriller film!

I do like the ambiguity of whether the film is actively intending to undermine Hunter as a character or not by making her the impulsive one (who almost gets them in a car accident at the opening of the film!) who is responsible for the situation, and giving her all of the pat dialogue lines that barely change in tone whether she is alive or dead (is it a damning character flaw that your personality is one note enough that it can be entirely recreated by someone else from their idea of what you probably would have said if you were still around?), and then eventually only having worth for her body to be used as a protective shield to shove a mobile phone into and throw off of the tower so that the phone survives the fall.

Or (and the final voiceover from Hunter suggests this, coming straight after and almost over-writing the final reconciliation scene of Becky and her father) is the film actually Hunter's more than Becky's? Hunter did more stuff on that tower (even dead!) than Becky did, and like any great adventurer who dies climbing Everest, trekking to the North Pole or doing some other silly stunt, will always be inextricably linked with the tower on which she met her end. Especially as she has a witness in Becky, who will be able to broadcast the story of their experience far and wide now that she is back on the ground with cellphone coverage again! We might never remember those people who went up and came back down again without incident (to reunite with daddy no less!), but we'll always remember the tragic sacrifice of those who died as those who pushed their experience of life to the limits and beyond, even if they paid the ultimate price as a result of their own impulsive risk-taking behaviour!

Night Train for Inverness, Sat 26th Apr, Talking Pictures.
Basic Instinct, Sat 26th Apr, Legend. (been on other channels)

The Nudist Story (1960), Sun 27th Apr, Talking Pictures.

The Last Command (1955), Wed 30th Apr, Legend.
Priest (1994), Wed 30th Apr, BBC4. (+ intro)

Nope, Thu 1st May, Film4.

Crimes of the Future (2022), Fri 2nd May, BBC2. Or...
Doomwatch: The Web of Fear + The Dark Eyes of London (1939), Fri 2nd May, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

One thing I forgot to note in the schedules was last Saturday Cate Blanchett turned up on Radio 4 doing her first ever radio drama, in an adaptation of Wallace Shawn's play The Fever.

On to this week jlnight has noted the most notable premieres although there is also another premiere on Channel 4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday 26th with Wrath of Man (dark 'n' moody take on an old song ahoy!) which was the first reteaming of Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham since 2005's ill-fated Revolver.

Other than that all of the other new films are clustered at the other end of the week, with Jordan Peele's Nope finally turning up on Film4 at 9 p.m. on Thursday 1st (in an alien abduction double bill followed by a repeat of Save Yourselves! at 11:30 p.m.!). And David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future is on BBC2 at 11 p.m. on Friday 2nd (if only they had commissioned Meta to create a VR world of Crimes of the Future! Although I guess there was no need to when Surgeon Simulator exists!). I was initially rather surprised to see something that edgy turn up on the BBC (it has Film4 all over it, although these days it may even be a bit too edgy for that channel!), but then I remembered that the BBC seems absolutely infatuated with showing Cronenberg's Eastern Promises film at least once every six months or so (fast turning it into the most shown Cronenberg film on UK television of all), so they would likely be all over another Viggo Mortensen-Cronenberg team up! (Although I cannot recall if or when A Dangerous Method has turned up on UK television last, which might put the lie to that theory!)
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Repeat-wise, jlnight has also noted the big one, which is the Jimmy McGovern written film Priest showing on BBC4 at 10:15 p.m. on Wednesday 30th, preceeded by a new interview with McGovern at 10 p.m. - although everything seems to be set against this screening, from the snooker still going on just before it, leading to a big disclaimer in the RadioTimes that any programmes afterwards may run late or be dropped altogether! And of course at this precise moment with current Pope-related events, a film about a gay Catholic priest may not be the best timing possible! So I would not be surprised if this gets postponed - see also Film4's also similarly unfortunately timed upcoming repeat screening of naughty nun Paul Verhoeven film Benedetta, currently scheduled for 11:15 p.m. on Saturday 26th!

The most interesting repeat of the week however is the Helena Bonham Carter starring The Heart of Me showing on BBC2 at 11 p.m. on Thursday 1st (unfortunately clashing with Nope).

Playtime (1967), Sat 3rd May, Talking Pictures.
Flight of the Intruder (1991), Sat 3rd May, Legend. Or...
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Sat 3rd May, Channel 4. Or...
Annihilation (2018), Sat 3rd May, Great Movies.

All the Pretty Horses, Sun 4th May, Great Action.

The Tell-Tale Heart (1960), Mon 5th May, Talking Pictures.

Die Screaming Marianne, Tue 6th May, Together TV. (last on That's TV)

Tarnished Heroes, Wed 7th May, Talking Pictures.
The Super Secret Service (short), Wed 7th May, Talking Pictures.
The Night of the 12th, Wed 7th May, Film4.

Groupie Girl, Thu 8th May, Together TV.

Doomwatch: In the Dark + The Living Dead at (the) Manchester Morgue, Fri 9th May, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

Interesting stuff next week. Continuing on from the premiere of Crimes of the Future on Friday, this upcoming Bank Holiday weekend is rather strongly sci-fi themed, with the previously mentioned Thomas Vinterberg series Families Like Ours starting on BBC4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday 3rd with the first two (of seven total) episodes, which seems suspiciously timed to coincide with Channel 4 showing the first episode of the sixth and final series of The Handmaid's Tale at the same time (plus it also clashes with Channel 4's premiere of Good Luck To You, Leo Grande at 10 p.m., in which Emma Thompson tries to get down with the kids). Simultaneously to all of that is the biggest film of the week, as after seven years Alex Garland's Annihilation turns up tucked away on the Freeview Digital "Great Movies" channel, also at 9 p.m. on Saturday 3rd (meaning that both the later Devs series (on BBC2) and Men (on Film4) both made it to UK television before it did).

After all that clashes together in a single evening the only other new film of note is French thriller The Night of the 12th, showing on Film4 at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 7th. Which unfortunately clashes with BBC4 continuing its archive television strand covering Jimmy McGovern, with McGovern doing a 15 minute introduction at 10 p.m. to his 2014 drama Common.

Traffic (1971), Sat 10th May, Talking Pictures.
Web of Suspicion, Sat 10th May, Talking Pictures.
Highlander III (The Final Dimension), Sat 10th May, Legend. Or...
Let's Get Laid!, Sat 10th May, Together TV.

Rodeo (2022), late Sun 11th May, Channel 4.

The Sundowners (1950), Wed 14th May, Talking Pictures. (Saddle Up)

She Said (2022), Thu 15th May, Film4. Or...
School For Sex, Thu 15th May, Together TV. (last on London Live)

Doomwatch: The Human Time Bomb + The Woman Who Came Back (1945), Fri 16th May, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

A few curios next week: on Saturday 10th episodes 3 & 4 of Families Like Ours on BBC4 clash with BBC2 showing a documentary about Milli Vanilli at 10 p.m. which is about the band that had their reputation destroyed when they were revealed to be miming along to a performance of one of their songs on stage, something which seems a crazy over-reaction now when we know that the vast majority of bands on, say, Top of the Pops, were as part of the policy of the programme makers also miming the songs that they were supposedly playing 'live' during that period.

Tucked away at 1 a.m.(!) in the early hours of Monday 12th on Channel 4 is French drama Rodeo. And another premiere is tucked away on the "Great Movies" digital channel at 9 p.m. on Tuesday 13th with DeLorean biopic Driven.

Weinstein scandal drama film She Said is on Film4 at 9 p.m. on Thursday 15th.
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Repeat-wise not too much. BBC4's archive television strand shows two episodes of AJP Taylor's 1976 series The War Lords (the episodes about Hitler and Mussolini respectively), with a new introduction from historian Andrew Roberts from 10:30 p.m. on Monday 12th.

And after mentioning how enamoured the BBC are with showing the Cronenberg-Mortensen team up of Eastern Promises a couple of weeks ago, that film turns up in the same timeslot that Crimes of the Future did, on BBC2 at 11 p.m. on Friday 16th.

First Spaceship on Venus (AKA Silent Star), Sat 17th May, Talking Pictures. (on before)
Parade (1974), Sat 17th May, Talking Pictures. Or...
My Name is Nobody, Sat 17th May, 5Action. (last on London Live)
If There Be Thorns (2015 TVM), Sat 17th May, 5Star. (Nancy Savoca)

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, Sun 18th May, Talking Pictures. (been on Legend)
Beyond the Law (1968), Sun 18th May, 5Action. (last on London Live)
Sex with the Stars, Sun 18th May, Together TV.

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, Tue 20th May, Sky Arts.

Ride in the Whirlwind, Wed 21st May, Talking Pictures. (Saddle Up) (been on Freeview)
Operation Stogie, Wed 21st May, Talking Pictures.
Permissive, Wed 21st May, Together TV. (last on London Live)

Doomwatch: The Inquest + Bluebeard (1972), Fri 23rd May, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)


EDIT: Beyond the Law replaced by Man Without A Star.
They Call Me Trinity was also in the early listings on 5Action.

Very little of note next week. Annoyingly the one big premiere of the week, of George Clooney's 1936 Munich Olympics(!) rowing athlete drama(!!) The Boys In The Boat (moody version of a classic song ahoy!) showing on BBC2 at 8 p.m. on Saturday 17th clashes with BBC4 doing a two and a half hour triple bill of episodes 5, 6 and 7 of Thomas Vinterberg's Families Like Us series from 9 p.m. at the same time.

Tucked away on the "Legend" digital channel is the premiere of the 2016 Matthew McConaughey film Gold at 9 p.m. on Sunday 18th. From Stephen Gaghan, most famous for directing the George Clooney drama Syriana. Although Gold has turned up on UK television years after the premiere of Gaghan's follow up, the notorious 2019 Robert Downey Jr. version of Dr Dolittle reached television screens.

Channel 4 are also showing the Amanda Seyfried series Long Bright River throughout the whole of the week, and are doing a strange thing of burning through the entire eight episode run in double bills on consecutive nights, with episodes 1 & 2 from 10 p.m. on Sunday 18th; episodes 3 &4 from 1:50 a.m. (!) in the early hours of Tuesday 20th; episodes 5 & 6 again at 1:50 a.m. (!!) in the early hours of Wednesday 21st; and episodes 7 & 8 at 1:50 a.m. in the early hours of Thursday 22nd. Which seems bizarre scheduling for a big US series, but probably makes sense for something Channel 4 is more wanting people to use their catch-up digital service to watch instead, and are just desultorily throwing out a presumably contractually mandatory linear television airing of too.
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Repeat-wise, nothing too much of note, although BBC4 is continuing to show episodes of the AJP Taylor 1976 The War Lords series on Monday 19th (the episodes on Churchil and Stalin on the 19th) and Film4 is repeating the Columbian film Birds of Passage at 1:20 a.m. in the early hours of Wednesday 21st.

Beyond the Time Barrier, Sat 24th May, Talking Pictures.
Mon Oncle, Sat 24th May, Talking Pictures.
The Big Combo, Sat 24th May, Talking Pictures. (ex-Moviedrome) Or...
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, Sat 24th May, BBC2.
New York, New York (1977), Sat 24th May, BBC2.

On Form (Dick Emery short), Sun 25th May, Talking Pictures.
Futtocks End (short), Sun 25th May, Together TV.
The Abyss, Sun 25th May, Legend.

Medway Queen (Peter Williams doc), Mon 26th May, Talking Pictures.

What Every Woman Wants (1954), Tue 27th May, Talking Pictures.
Zeta One, Tue 27th May, Together TV.

Doomwatch: The Logicians + Demons of the Mind (1972), Fri 30th May, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

Great news about New York, New York! That will be the first time it has appeared on UK television since Channel 4's Century of Cinema season on 28th May 1995! So just four days shy of the thirtieth anniversary of that previous screening!

(And just as the first Joker film was probably riffing on The King of Comedy, the Joker sequel was probably alluding to this Scorsese film)

I checked and although you are correct about the 1995 screening there was apparently another Channel 4 broadcast in 1998. The last time it was on the telly was, it seems, 2004, on ITV1 which is where I must have seen it. Prior to all of this it premiered on Channel 4 at the tail-end of 1986. It's quite a long film isn't it?

jlnight wrote: Sun May 18, 2025 10:10 am It's quite a long film isn't it?

155 minutes originally, reissued with the previously deleted "Happy Endings" sequence reinstated at 163 minutes. It's a long time since I saw it, at what was then the National Film Theatre in the 1990s.

Relatively quiet next week. The big film is Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning showing on Channel 4 at 8 p.m. on Saturday 24th. That unfortunately clashes against BBC2 showing Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story at 9 p.m., which is immediately followed, as jlnight has noted, by a rare repeat of Scorsese's New York, New York at 10:40 p.m. (The Judy Garland film Meet Me In St Louis is also showing earlier in the afternoon at 2:30 p.m.)

The only other new thing of note is another entry in BBC4's Storyville documentary strand with White Man Walking at 10 p.m. on Tuesday 27th, in which the titular 'White Man' (i.e. Journalist) does a Forrest Gump-style (or Die Hard With A Vengeance-style?) walk whilst wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt through the southern states of the US. It appears to go as well as you would expect.
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Repeat-wise, two more episodes of the AJP Taylor The War Lords series turn up on BBC4 on Monday 26th at 10:50 p.m. with episodes focused on Churchill and Japan during World War II. But the big one is that, to tie in with the BBC doing a Jane Austen season, there is a very rare showing of the 1971 TV series version of Sense and Sensibility, with all four episodes showing in a single block on BBC4 from 10 p.m. on Wednesday 28th.

(And tucked away on the "Great Action" digital channel at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday 25th is a rare showing of the Raoul Walsh directed, John Wayne starring The Big Trail)

Jack the Giant Killer (1962), Sat 31st May, Talking Pictures.
The Red Beret (Paratrooper), Sat 31st May, Talking Pictures.
Ship of Fools, Sat 31st May, Talking Pictures. (been on Freeview) Or...
See How They Run (2022), Sat 31st May, Channel 4.

Cactus Flower, Sun 1st Jun, Talking Pictures. (been on Freeview)

The Durant Affair, Mon 2nd Jun, Talking Pictures.

Run Wild, Run Free, Wed 4th Jun, Talking Pictures.
National Anthem (2023), Wed 4th Jun, Film4.

Singing Through (Be Careful, Mr Smith), Thu 5th Jun, Talking Pictures.
The Apartment (1960), Thu 5th Jun, Sky Arts.

La Joie De Vivre (short), Fri 6th Jun, Talking Pictures.
Doomwatch: Public Enemy + Horrors of the Black Museum, Fri 6th Jun, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

A few things next week. Channel 4 has a premiere of murder mystery comedy based around Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, See How They Run at 9 p.m. on Saturday 31st. Which is probably following in the wake of Knives Out, but with its arch period setting might also be interesting to compare to Radioland Murders!

Also at 9 p.m. on the same evening BBC4's 'world television' strand begins with the first two episodes of the four part German crime series Spuren (The Black Forest Murders).

Film4 has a couple of premieres in its annual gay film season with Bros at 9 p.m. on Monday 2nd, and National Anthem at 11:20 p.m. on Wednesday 4th.

The curio of the week is in BBC4's Storyville documentary strand, with a 90 minute interview with Carlos the Jackal in The Jackal Speaks at 10 p.m. on Tuesday 3rd. And Season 8 of Rick & Morty is starting on E4 at 9 p.m. on Sunday 1st.
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Repeat-wise, not too much. ITV4 is showing both The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars throughout next week. Film4 is repeating the Jonas Mekas documentary Fragments of Paradise at 1:40 a.m. in the early hours of Tuesday 3rd; and Spartacus is showing twice in tribute to the centenary of Tony Curtis' birth - un-DOG-tagged on BBC2 at 1 p.m. on Sunday 1st and DOG-tagged on BBC4 at 8:15 p.m. on Thursday 5th, which is preceded by a 45 minute "Talking Pictures" episode trawling the BBC's archives for making of footage and cast interviews at 7:30 p.m.

Lord Jim, Sat 7th Jun, Talking Pictures. (been on Freeview)
A Dandy in Aspic, Sat 7th Jun, Talking Pictures.

Day of Anger (1967), Sun 8th Jun, 5Action. (last on London Live)
The Blue Lagoon, Sun 8th Jun, Talking Pictures. (been on Freeview)

Two Wives at One Wedding, Mon 9th Jun, Talking Pictures.

Star of My Night, Tue 10th Jun, Talking Pictures.
Fate Takes a Hand, Tue 10th Jun, Talking Pictures.
Master Gardener (2022), Tue 10th Jun, Great Movies.
Musketeer (2022 short), Tue 10th Jun, Together TV.

The Brink's Job, Wed 11th Jun, Legend. (last on TPTV)

Doomwatch: Waiting for a Knighthood + Final Curtain (1957 pilot) + Scared to Death (1947), Fri 13th Jun, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club) Or...
Cruel Passion, Fri 13th Jun, Together TV. (last on London Live)



Cracked Actor is showing on Sun 8th Jun on BBC2 as part of a night dedicated to the late Alan Yentob. During his tenure as BBC2 controller the channel ushered in Moviedrome. There is a season in July and August down at the BFI featuring some films from those series!