THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN’S APOCALYPSE (2005)
Film4, 9pm
The inhabitants of Royston Vasey escape into the real world to prevent their show being killed off in the feature-film spin-off from the much-loved television series.
In a convoluted piece of post- modern plotting, the comic quartet play themselves as well as their fictional creations. Much of the humour is more clever than funny, but overall this is a commendably ambitious and frequently inspired effort. (91 min)
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THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
BBC Four, 9.20pm
The legendary director Sam Peckinpah initially caused fierce controversy with this violent memorial to the brutal machismo of the Old West, although it is now regarded as a revisionist masterpiece and arguably his finest film. With revolution in Mexico looming, William Holden’s grizzled outlaw anti-hero leads his gang of middle-aged, weather- beaten bandits into one last fateful spree of bloody cross-border heists. (134 min)
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WRONG TURN (2003)
Channel 4, 10pm
Yet another teen slasher flick about a massacre of attractive young townies by backwoods rednecks, Wrong Turn is at least gracious enough to acknowledge John Boorman’s classic Deliverance at one point in the dialogue. Desmond Harrington and Eliza Dushku lead the cast as photogenic prey lost in the West Virginia badlands. The director Rob Schmidt presses all the right buttons, but brings little new to a tired genre. (84 min)
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DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1988)
BBC One, 11.20pm
Christopher Hampton’s stage smash, elegantly transformed into a triple Oscar winner by Stephen Frears, relishes the sadistic intrigue and sexual politics of 18th-century French nobles. John Malkovich is magnificently sly and sleazy as the serial seducer Vicomte de Valmont, who bets his monstrous former lover (Glenn Close) that he can bed a virginal Michelle Pfeiffer. (119 min)