THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969)
ITV1, 12.45pm
Maggie Smith gives an Oscar-winning star turn as the wrong-headed schoolmistress at an all-girls school in 1930s Edinburgh, earning adoration from her pupils but disapproval from Celia Johnson’s headmistress. The director Ronald Neame wraps Muriel Spark’s classic novel in a pleasingly sharp script and picture- book scenery. (116min)
Advertisement
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965, b/w)
Five, 5.30pm
Adapted from the breakthrough novel by John le Carré, this arrived like a blast of chill monochrome realism to counterbalance James Bond’s glamorous playboy fantasies. Richard Burton is superb as a boozy, disaffected MI6 agent reluctantly sent back behind the Iron Curtain. Claire Bloom co-stars. (112min)
TOUCHING THE VOID (2003)
Channel 4, 7.20pm
Originally earmarked as a Tom Cruise blockbuster, this gripping docudrama is based on Joe Simpson’s memoir of a doomed attempt to scale an unconquered Peruvian peak in 1985 that almost ended in his death. Besides reminiscing on camera, Simpson and his fellow climber Simon Yates also served as body doubles for the actors playing their younger selves. (106min)
UNDERWORLD (2003)
Channel 4, 9.20pm
A shallow orgy of special effects that owes a clear debt to The Matrix in its techno-gothic style. When all-out war breaks out between vampires and werewolves, Kate Beckinsale’s leather-clad bloodsucker Selene must take on the armies of darkness. Bill Nighy lends a lone dash of class. (121min)
Advertisement
MultiChannel
Advertisement
THE FRESHMAN (1990)
ITV3, 10pm
Marlon Brando emerged from semi-retirement for this light comic treat, amusingly spoofing his role as Don Corleone in The Godfather. Brando plays a shady businessman who makes Matthew Broderick’s innocent student an offer he can’t refuse by involving him in an elaborate scam involving illegally imported endangered species. (102min)
Advertisement
NIGHT WATCH (2004)
Film4, 10.40pm
The first in a planned trilogy from the director Timur Bekmambetov, this Moscow-set vampire blockbuster broke box office records to become the most successful homegrown release in Russian history. Based on Sergei Lukyanenko’s bestselling fantasy novel about an uneasy truce between the armies of light and dark, Night Watch is full of impressive action but overstuffed with dense and confusing plot. (112min)