2 hours ago
9
Pick of the week
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
Whether the Birmingham-set period crime drama needed another outing after six series is a moot point, but Tommy Shelby is back to brood magnificently one final time. Creator Steven Knight and director Tom Harper keep things reassuringly familiar (glowering vistas, anachronistic songs, random acts of violence) but we’re now in 1940, and the Nazis are coming. While Tommy (Cillian Murphy) is holed up in a decaying mansion haunted by the ghosts of his past, his impetuous son and heir Duke (Barry Keoghan) forms an alliance with British fascist John Beckett (a cool Tim Roth) to flood the country with counterfeit currency. And only Tommy can stop them …
Friday 20 March, Netflix
Sketch
Grief is a thing with orange skin, no eyes and a massive mouth. In Seth Worley’s imaginative, kid-friendly horror, crayon pictures of scary monsters – drawn compulsively by Amber (Bianca Belle) as she deals with her mother’s death – come magically, perilously to life. Dad Taylor (Tony Hale) and brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) have their own, less deadly, avoidance strategies but must also face up to their loss. In great Goonies fashion, it’s the children who have the solution to the often comic threats springing from Amber’s morbid mind.
Saturday 14 March, 9am, 6.20pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
A Fistful of Dollars
An unauthorised adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai classic Yojimbo (whose Japanese studio sued), Sergio Leone’s 1964 film popularised the “spaghetti western” and so revitalised this hitherto all-American genre. It also made a star of stubbly young Clint Eastwood, whose taciturn, poncho-clad gunslinger rides into a frontier town and cunningly sets its two warring criminal families against each other. It’s a wilfully stylish film, with sweaty closeups, gunshots that sound like cannon fire and tension so ramped up you could cut it with a bowie knife.
Saturday 14 March, 9pm, Sky Arts
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
With her candid memoir out now, here’s a complimentary evening in the company of showbiz great Liza Minnelli. Before a double bill of her films – the peerless Cabaret and the flawed but ambitious New York, New York – Bruce David Klein’s documentary gives a detailed lowdown on her career and the mentors who helped her emerge from the shadow of her famous mother, Judy Garland. From performers Kay Thompson and Charles Aznavour to theatre giants Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb, plus fashion designer Halston, it’s a fascinating star-is-born tale.
Saturday 14 March, 9.15pm, BBC Two
The Martian
Although Ridley Scott’s output has been hit-and-miss in recent decades, his 2015 sci-fi movie is up there with his best work. The always engaging Matt Damon is astronaut Mark, who is stranded alone on Mars after a Nasa mission goes wrong. He has four years until possible rescue, but not enough resources to survive. The solution? “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.” In essence, this is a space procedural, where the technical problems Mark faces provide all the drama you need.
Sunday 15 March, 10pm, BBC Two
The Son
The last in Florian Zeller’s trilogy of plays (after The Mother and The Father) gets the screen treatment. It’s a more straightforward take on family strife than the earlier two, though the emotional turbulence is just as acute. Hugh Jackman plays Peter – father to teenager Nicholas (Zen McGrath), divorced from Laura Dern’s Kate and now married to Beth (Vanessa Kirby) with a new baby. Nicholas is showing signs of depression so Peter lets him come to stay. But, as a doctor says, “love is not enough” and Peter – who has a fractured relationship with his own dad – doesn’t have the tools to deal with a mental health crisis.
Sunday 15 March, 11pm, Channel 4
In Camera
The travails of an actor condemned to a series of humiliating auditions could be the subject of comedy (see Wonder Man). But in Naqqash Khalid’s dislocating satirical drama it becomes the stuff of nightmares. Nabhaan Rizwan is compelling as Aden, first seen as a bloodied corpse in a police show, who seems worryingly disconnected in the face of the awkwardness and fake sincerity of his vocation. And when he is hired by a therapist to play a dead son for a grieving mother, his grip on reality starts to loosen. The same goes for the film itself, which feels increasingly untethered.
Friday 20 March, 11.10pm, BBC Two
