David Lynch: The Art Life (15)

Thunderbird Releasing, £19.99

A FOLLOW-UP of sorts to their 2007 film Lynch, which followed cult director David Lynch during the production of his film Inland Empire, this Kickstarter-funded documentary from directors Jon Nguyen, Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Rick Barnes is narrated by its subject, shot in and around his California home and sees him describing at length his early life and his first love: painting. The cut-off point in the narrative is Lynch's arrival at film school and the making of his surreal, 1977 breakthrough Eraserhead, while the title comes via a book about art he was given as a young man by the painter Bushnell Keeler, a mentor of sorts and father of his friend Toby Keeler.

The film-makers follow their subject unobtrusively as he works on his extraordinary canvases – wearing latex gloves he layers on clay and paint and grotesque, twisted forms which he constructs himself – or potters around his studio sawing and hacking and making things, with his toddler daughter in tow. Four times married, Lynch's eldest child is now nearly 50.

Sometimes the director just sits and stares at nothing much, usually with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. At other times he takes himself off to a sort of stylised recording studio, built by the film-makers presumably, where he talks into a gleaming chrome microphone while a red, On Air light burns in the foreground. Just as that image is slightly Lynchian, so is what he says, an overlapping series of anecdotes and recollections that never add up to a straight re-telling of his life story. Interspersed with the created footage are a cornucopia of documentary images, some showing the director as a bohemian art student in Philadelphia, others showing his parents and siblings, others setting the scene for his entry into the film world with brooding, artful black and white images of run-down buildings and dilapidated Philadelphia streets. A stylish and highly-accomplished look at a side of the director most fans of his films will never have seen.

Mindhorn (15)

Studio Canal, £9.99

WHAT do you get if you cross Alan Partridge with late night Channel 4 comedy Toast Of London and some of the more risible moments from Bergerac, the oft-lampooned 1980s series starring John Nettles as a Jersey detective? The answer is this super-silly British comedy, executive produced by Steve Coogan himself and co-written by Julian Barratt (of The Mighty Boosh fame) and Simon Farnaby, a long-standing member of the (admittedly rather wonderful) Horrible Histories team.

Barratt plays Richard Thorncroft, star of 1980s series Mindhorn, which was set and filmed in the Isle of Man. Now bald and living in a sort of garret in Walthamstow after his star has faded spectacularly – a drunken appearance on Wogan did for him – he spends his days blagging his way into auditions (there's a great cameo from Kenneth Branagh in one such scene) or hassling his agent, played by Harriet Walter. Cut to the Isle of Man, and former co-star and lover Patricia Deville (Essie Davis) is now living with boorish Mindhorn stuntman Clive Parnevik (Farnaby) and working as a reporter on Manx TV. But when a woman on the island is abducted and the apparent kidnapper says he will only deal with Mindhorn, the police have no option but to invite Thorncroft to reprise his role as the fictional cop. It all plays out pleasingly enough, thanks to the efforts of Barratt and Farnaby and the presence of the always welcome Steve Coogan. He plays Peter Eastman, the one cast member in Mindhorn who actually had a further career. Branagh's turn is fun too, as is a similar cameo from fellow thespian Simon Callow, while Russell Tovey, Andrea Riseborough, Richard McCabe and Nicholas Farrell flesh out the rest of the parts.

Top Of The Lake: The Collection (15)

2entertain, £26

LIKE Sally Wainwright's BAFTA-winning Happy Valley – now pretty much confirmed for a third series – Jane Campion's two editions of Top Of The Lake so far have been notable for their eerie sense of place (New Zealand's South Island in season one, Sydney's red light district in season two) and for a cast of strong female characters led by Elisabeth Moss's hard-drinking detective Robin Griffin. Unlike Happy Valley, Top Of The Lake delights in oddity, dislocation, gratuitously baroque image-making and plot lines which have deadly serious subjects at their core – child abuse, migration, sex trafficking, gender politics – but all bound up in a narrative which stretches credulity at points.

Series two recently finished its terrestrial transmission on BBC and at the time of writing was available on the BBC iPlayer. But if you want to gorge on both series the old-fashioned way then here's the double box set featuring star turns (and possible career bests) from Peter Mullen and Holly Hunter in series one, and a grey-haired and cantankerous Nicole Kidman in season two, all held together by the mesmerising Elisabeth Moss. Game Of Thrones fans will also enjoy seeing Gwendoline Christie (better known as Brienne of Tarth) swapping her XXL armour for the uniform of a Sydney police officer, and her super-serious demeanour for something a lot less uptight.