THE SEA HAWK (1940, b/w)
BBC Two, 1.10pm
Cashing in on his success in Captain Blood five years earlier, Errol Flynn again plays a roguish gentleman pirate in a vintage high-seas yarn from the Casablanca director Michael Curtiz. Brenda Marshall stands in for Flynn’s usual love interest, Olivia de Havilland. (109min)
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THE MAGDALENE SISTERS (2002)
Channel 4, 10pm
Directed by the Scottish actor Peter Mullan, this hard-knuckled drama attacks the Irish Catholic church’s long history of incarcerating “fallen women” in prison-like Magdalene “laundries”. Geraldine McEwan plays the Mother Superior of one such institution, whose enslaved and exploited inmates include rape victims, unmarried mothers and teenage girls guilty of nothing more than flirting.
Co-starring Anne-Marie Duff, Mullan’s sustained howl of outrage is heavy- handed in places, but powerful enough to earn condemnation from Catholic bishops. The last Magdalene convent was closed only in themid-1990s. (119min)
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MultiChannel
THE INSIDER (1999)/ GLADIATOR (2000)
ITV4, 9pm/Film4, 9pm
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A tough choice for Russell Crowe fans, this simultaneous double bill features the pugilistic Australian superstar in two very different but equally impressive roles.
A triumph of spectacle over historical accuracy, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is a muscular reinvention of the swords-and-sandals blockbuster. Crowe earned an Academy Award for his butch turn as a mutinous warrior rebelling against his political paymasters in Ancient Rome.
Crowe was also Oscar nominated for his bloated, grey-haired transformation in The Insider, Michael Mann’s portrait of the real- life whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand and his courageous struggle to expose tobacco industry malpractice. (155 min/157min)