THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980)
Film4, 9pm
Arriving just in time for Thatcherism, John Mackenzie’s hardboiled gangster classic about cut-throat gangsters carving up London’s Docklands now feels like a prophetic allegory for the wideboy excesses of the 1980s. Bob Hoskins makes his explosive starring debut as Harold Shand, a Cockney Napoleon waging war on shadowy underworld enemies. (114 min)
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS (2002)
Channel 4, 11pm
Shirley Henderson plays a working-class Midlands mother torn between her dependable dork boyfriend (Rhys Ifans) and her petty criminal ex (Robert Carlyle) in this warm-hearted kitchen-sink comedy from Shane Meadows. The tone is overly whimsical while fringe cast members Kathy Burke and Ricky Tomlinson are underused. But there are tender moments, mainly involving Ifans and the fine young newcomer Finn Atkins. (104 min)
THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN (1987)
BBC One, 11.15pm; Wales, 11.45pm
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Cinematic homages do not come more blatant than the scene in Danny DeVito’s bruise-black farce where two would-be killers take lessons in murder from Hitchcock’s 1951 classic Strangers on a Train. In Hitchcock’s original, the strangers agree to swap crimes and thus evade suspicion. But in this pleasingly macabre comedy, the henpecked mummy’s boys Owen (DeVito) and Larry (Billy Crystal) make a complete hash of their attempted killings. (88min)
THE RETURN (2003)
Film4, 1.05am
The debut feature by Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev is a poignant, exquisitely filmed arthouse fable with quasi-biblical overtones. After 12 years away, an authoritarian father (Konstantin Lavronenko) is reunited with his sons (Vladmir Garin and Ivan Dobronrarov) on a tense fishing trip. In a bitter twist of fate, Garin died soon after shooting in the lake featured in the film. (105 min)