SKY WEST AND CROOKED (1966)
BBC Two, 12.35pm
John Mills directed this gentle but appealing family drama, which is adapted from the novel by his wife, Mary Hayley Bell, and stars their teenage daughter, Hayley Mills. A young Ian McShane plays a gypsy boy who becomes romantically involved with an emotionally disturbed girl (Mills), stoking inevitable tensions in their picturesque West Country backwater. (105min)
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MISS JULIE (1999)
BBC Two, 11.20pm
Mike Figgis finds contemporary echoes of class and gender war in his stripped-down version of August Strindberg’s 19th- century chamber piece. Behind the scenes at a midsummer party in a Swedish country mansion, sexual and political tension simmers between the aristocratic Julie (Saffron Burrows) and her footman Jean (Peter Mullan). Using just a single set, Figgis and his fine cast keep the emotional fireworks crackling. (103min)
CYPHER (2002)
Channel 4, 11.50pm
Five years after his highly regarded feature debut Cube, the Candian writer- director Vincenzo Natali returned with this equally accomplished sci-fi fable. Jeremy Northam and Lucy Liu play industrial spies recruited into a claustrophobic underworld of double agents and corporate brainwashing. A clever fusion of political satire and futuristic action thriller. (95min)
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MultiChannel
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GODS AND MONSTERS (1998)
BBC Four, 10.40pm
Ian McKellen plays the real-life film-maker James Whale in this finely acted period drama. The creator of the early Frankenstein films, Whale was one of Hollywood’s first openly gay directors, and his career suffered accordingly. Co-starring Brendan Fraser, Bill Condon’s funny and touching film revisits his twilight years of enforced retirement and tries to explain his mysterious death in 1957. (105min)