The pick of the TV films

Writer-director Peter Strickland follows the stylised weirdness of Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke Of Burgundy with an off-kilter horror comedy about a desirable red dress that hungers for the blood of any woman that dares wear it. Catalogue model Jill (Sidse Babett Knudsen, who also starred in The Duke Of Burgundy) meets a grisly fate after she slips on the red fabric. The couture becomes an object of obsession for divorcee Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who spots the garment in a sale at her local department store. She hopes the striking red dress will empower her to face odious boss Clive (Steve Oram) and wipe the smug grin off the face of her son’s condescending girlfriend, Gwen (Gwendoline Christie). Sheila is completely unprepared for the transformation the frock will inspire or the carnage that will be left in her wake.

Sunday

The Gift, Film 4, 11.15pm

Simon (Jason Bateman) and his emotionally brittle wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) move back to his hometown of LA, where he is eyeing a promotion at a computer security firm. During a shopping trip for furnishings, the Callems cross paths with Simon's old school chum Gordon Mosley (Joel Edgerton, who also directs) who still lives in the area. The following day, the Callems find a bottle of wine from Gordon on their doorstep, and Simon reveals the loner's nickname at school was Gordo the Weirdo. In the days that follow, Gordon arrives unannounced at the house while Simon is at work and forges an uneasy bond with Robyn, who grows concerned about an unspoken incident involving the two men when they teenagers. The Gift has fun toying with conventions of the thriller genre, without straying too far from creepily familiar territory.

Monday

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Film 4, 9pm

Hell hath no fury like a grief-stricken mother scorned in writer-director Martin McDonagh's blackly comic drama. It has been seven months since Angela Hayes was abducted, raped and murdered on her way home. The dead girl's mother Mildred (Oscar-winner Frances McDormand) is infuriated by the lack of progress under police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). So, she rents three advertising hoardings on the outskirts of town and emblazons each billboard with a message aimed directly at the man responsible for apprehending the culprits. However, bigoted officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell, who also won an Oscar) reacts violently to Mildred's public spat with his station. Impeccably scripted and blessed with a blistering lead performance from McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a truly remarkable film – which might explain why Film 4 show it so much.

Tuesday

Funny Face, Talking Pictures TV, 1.40pm

When fearsome editor Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) wants a model to represent her magazine, photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) picks book-store clerk Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn). Although she’s more interested in philosophy than fashion, Jo agrees, as it means a free trip to Paris. But it isn’t long before her desire to sit in dark cafes talking about Sartre clashes with her new role – and her burgeoning romance with the snapper. Astaire looks a little old to be wooing Hepburn, and the plot is thin to say the least, but this 1957 musical is still a joy from start to finish. With Singin' In The Rain co-director Stanley Donen at the helm, you’d expect great song-and-dance routines, but it also boasts fabulous frocks, a generous dash of humour, and a scene-stealing turn from Thompson.

Wednesday

Journeyman, Film 4, 11.10pm

Actor Paddy Considine returns to the director’s chair for a hard-hitting drama about a boxing champion, whose charmed life suffers a series of knockout blows inside and out of the ring. Matty Burton (Considine) is a veteran of the boxing scene who has a comfortable life with his loyal wife Emma (Jodie Whittaker) and their baby daughter. Matty is in the final years of a glittering career and he feverishly prepares for a high-profile bout against cocksure younger rival, Andre Bryte (Anthony Welsh). The subsequent showdown takes a devastating toll on Matty’s battered and bruised body. The injuries are life-changing and he returns a shadow of his former self, relying completely on Emma to perform the most basic daily tasks, putting pressure on their marriage.

Thursday

The Lost City Of Z, BBC Four, 9pm

British artillery officer Colonel Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) is offered a mission mapping uncharted territory in Bolivia with the help of local tribesmen. Percy accepts and abandons his wife Nina (Sienna Miller) to venture into the unknown with aide-de-camp Corporal Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson). Percy returns home with a strong conviction that he has stumbled upon proof of a lost civilisation that will astound the academic elite. A second expedition in the company of wealthy adventurer James Murray (Angus Macfadyen) teeters on the brink of disaster, but Percy pushes forward, terrified of the consequences of failure. Shot on location in the Colombian rainforest, The Lost City of Z is a handsome tribute to one man's struggle against himself and Mother Nature.

Friday

Film Of The Week: Lady Macbeth, BBC Two, Friday, 11.20pm

Based on Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novella Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District, also the inspiration for an opera by Shostakovich and a 1962 film version by Polish great Andrzej Wajda, this acclaimed 2016 adaptation by first-time director William Oldroyd keeps the 19th century setting but switches the action from western Russian to the north east of England. If you know your Shakespeare, you’ll know from the title that this isn’t going to be a comedy – and that there will be a woman at the heart of it with blood on her hands.

That woman is Katherine Lester (Florence Pugh in her breakout role). As the action opens she has just been married to Alexander Lester (Paul Hilton), an older man she doesn’t love, and taken to live in the cold and draughty Northumberland manor he shares with his father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank). Ruthless colliery owners rather than genteel landed gentry, the Lester men view Katherine as just another item of property, one which is expected to remain meek and demure. Beneath her impassive gaze, Katherine has other ideas and when she saves a housemaid from being ridiculed by farmhands – they’ve hoisted her in a sling in a barn and are attempting to weight her – she has her first fateful encounter with Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). Lust ignites fast.

So far, so Lady Chatterley. But what follows pitches us into a bleak and amoral psycho-drama in which Katherine and Sebastian cocoon themselves in a passionate affair and then, when the outside world starts to impinge, emerge to face the consequences and wreak their own particular form of havoc.

Young screenwriter Alice Birch subsequently co-write Normal People for the BBC, many critics’ top TV drama of 2020, and is now a key member of the writing team on Succession, Jesse Armstrong’s award-winning (nine Emmys and counting) HBO drama. Pugh, meanwhile, went on to star in folk horror hit Midsommar (watch Lady Macbeth and you’ll understand why) and was then cast in Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster adaptation of Little Woman, in which she plays Amy March.

And one to stream …

Wolfwalkers, Apple TV

From the Irish animation team of Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart that brought us The Secret Of Kells and Song Of The Sea comes this third instalment of their so-called ‘Irish Trilogy’. Set in Kilkenny in 1650 – if you don’t know your history, this is the period of Oliver Cromwell – it follows young Robyn Goodfellowe (voiced by Honor Kneafsey) and her father Bill (Sean Bean) as they’re tasked with hunting down and exterminating a wolf pack which has been terrorising the farmers. Enter Mebh Óg MacTíre (Eva Whittaker), a so-called ‘wolfwalker’ who turns lycanthrope when she sleeps. And so the stage is set for a stirring adventure Robyn and Mebh strike up a friendship and take on big, bad Ollie Cromwell (Simon McBurney).