SATURDAY

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson, today, BBC One, 8.30pm

On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 takes off from LaGuardia airport in New York bound for North Carolina with 155 passengers and crew on board. Three minutes into take-off, a flock of Canadian geese impacts the aircraft, causing multiple strikes to both engines that necessitated an emergency landing. Captain Chesley Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) glides the stricken Airbus A320 onto the Hudson River in freezing conditions and oversees the evacuation of everyone on board aided by First Officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart). However, the subsequent investigation by the National Transportation casts doubt on Sully's version of events. Directed by Clint Eastwood, Sully: Miracle on the Hudson is a masterclass in sustained tension, which replays the events of that fateful day from multiple perspectives. Plus, everyone loves Tom Hanks, right? Right.

SUNDAY

The Accountant, BBC One 10.30pm

In this sharp-shooting thriller, Ben Affleck attempts to muscle in on his old friend Matt Damon’s status as a tormented assassin (see the Bourne films) by playing an autistic number cruncher who is as gifted with his fists as with an automatic rifle. Christian Wolff (Affleck) meticulously investigates embezzlement, insider trading and other financial irregularities in criminal enterprises. The Treasury Department, led by soon-to-retire financial crimes director, Raymond King (JK Simmons), is determined to expose Wolff as the shadowy figure called The Accountant. Meanwhile, Wolff is hired by Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), long-serving CEO of Living Robotics, to verify the findings of a perky in-house accountant, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), who alleges more than $60 million of company funds has gone astray.

MONDAY

Molly's Game, BBC Two, 10pm

After an injury ends her skiing career, Molly (the always watchable Jessica Chastain) lands a thankless job as a personal assistant to real estate wheeler dealer Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong), who organises high-stakes poker games for the Hollywood elite. Molly learns the tricks of the gambling trade and when Dean betrays her, she retaliates by setting up her own game, luring some of his best punters including celebrity Player X (Michael Cera). As Molly's reputation grows, along with her financial exposure, she attracts members of the Russian mafia to her table, which makes her a prime target for an FBI sting. Based on a true story and written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Molly's Game is anchored by Chastain, who reflects every facet of her character's psychology as she weathers a storm of public vilification.

TUESDAY

I Know Where I'm Going!, Talking Pictures, 2.30pm

The writing and directing partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced some of the best movies ever to come out of Britain, including A Matter of Life and Death, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus. I Know Where I'm Going! might not be quite up to that trio's standard, but it's certainly a highly entertaining affair. Powell was already familiar with Scotland after filming The Edge of the World here in 1937, and returned with Pressburger for this tale of a headstrong girl who sets out to marry a wealthy man for his money – until she meets a dashing Navy officer who changes her life. Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey head the cast, which also includes Pamela Brown and Dad's Army veteran John Laurie. The production was filmed largely on location on Mull and there’s a famous scene featuring the Corryvreckan whirlpool.

WEDNESDAY

The Way Way Back, Film4, 6.55pm

Fourteen-year-old Duncan (Liam James) wanted to spend the summer vacation with his father in San Diego. Instead, he's being forced to tolerate a holiday with his mother Pam (Toni Collette), her new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) and Trent's tearaway teenage daughter Steph (Zoe Levin). Feeling desperately alone, Duncan ventures to a nearby Water Wizz theme park where the wise-cracking owner Owen (Sam Rockwell) takes pity on the miserable teenager and hires him for the summer. Keeping the job secret from his mother, Duncan gains confidence under his reckless mentor. Drawing obvious comparisons with Little Miss Sunshine, The Way Way Back is a bittersweet coming-of-age story, which navigates a haphazard path through Duncan's growing pains with tenderness and affection.

THURSDAY

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, ITV4, 9pm

Having destroyed a cyborg assassin sent to kill her in The Terminator (and had a child with the soldier sent to protect her) Linda Hamilton’s feisty Sarah Connor is now locked up in a psychiatric institute. Thankfully she is broken out by her young son John (Edward Furlong) and a reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) – re-programmed not to be dead-set on murdering Sarah and John. The bad news is that a lethal killer made from something that looks like liquid metal (Robert Patrick) is out to do what Arnie couldn’t manage in the first film. Got that? Considering state-of-the-art effects date faster than dairy, James Cameron's ground-breaking movie still looks great after 28 years and the stunts, editing and score are top-notch, Hamilton deserves full marks for such a committed performance and Schwarzenegger is as effective a good guy as he was an implacable villain. The best of the Terminator films? Discuss.

FRIDAY

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Friday, BBC One, 10.45pm

Anyone with doubts that untested Swedish director Tomas Alfredson can handle something as iconic and impenetrably British as a film version of John le Carré’s cult spy novel will have them eased pretty quickly by the opening scenes of this acclaimed 2011 adaptation, which won a BAFTA and secured three Oscar nominations. And if the early shots of the cast don’t do it – what a line-up: John Hurt, Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Simon McBurney, Stephen Graham, Kathy Burke, Ciarán Hinds and Colin Firth – then the awesome set design and the fact that it’s a full 18 minutes before Oldman’s George Smiley even utters a word will do the trick.

From stylish start to stylish finish Alfredson handles the material beautifully, helped by a sympathetic and (generally) faithful script from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan. Oldman and Co. do the rest, though it’s up to the viewer to decide if Alfredson is filming the book or making a lush (and very beige) cinema version of the iconic 1979 television series which starred Alec Guinness as Smiley. There are certainly some cute nods in its direction. At one point we see Smiley go for an eye test and emerge from the opticians wearing a new pair of glasses, but out are the 1960s-style ones he wears in the film’s opening scenes and in are the exact pair Alec Guinness wears. At the same time there are other touches which seem entirely Alfredson’s. After recruiting ex-Special Branch officer-turned-amateur beekeeper Mendel (le Carré fans will remember him from Call For The Dead), Smiley and Guillam drive back to London with one of Mendel’s bees trapped in the car with them. Alfredson shoots the scene through the rear windscreen, a neat metaphor for the real life spy-swatting game the trio are about to embark on and which will have a sting in the tail for Smiley.

As for the plot, it’s only marginally less labyrinthine than in the novel and the TV series. In short, there’s a Russian mole at the highest level of British intelligence and after the death of the previous head of the service (Control, played by John Hurt) Smiley is asked by top civil servant Oliver Lacon (McBurney) to find him. The search pits him against former colleagues Percy Alleline (Jones), Bill Haydon (Firth) and Roy Bland (Hinds), respectively Tinker, Tailor and Soldier. But which one, if any, is the Russian spy?

AND ONE TO STREAM …

The Traitor, Curzon Home Cinema

Epic in every sense – it clocks in at over two and a half hours – Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s widescreen gem takes as its subject the so-called “maxi-trials” of Sicilian Cosa Nostra members which took place from the mid-1980s onwards on the instigation of campaigning judge Giovanni Falcone. Specifically it follows the life of the first ‘man of honour’ to turn informer: Tommaso Buscetta, a ‘soldier’ in Palermo’s Porta Nuova gang who spent much of his time in the USA and Brazil and who came to be known as ‘the boss of two worlds’. Opening in 1980 with a grand scene in a beachside house at which Sicily’s various Cosa Nostra families have come together to cement a peace deal – also present is the infamous Totò Riina – it follows Buscetta as he swaps Palermo for Rio de Janeiro and a new life with third wife Cristina, only to be dragged back in to his old life when Riina launches a bloody and savage takeover. It’s the slaying of several members of Buscetta's family, including his two grown-up sons, which persuades him to turn ‘pentito’ and talk to Falcone.

Now 80, Marco Bellocchio is an award-winning director whose laser-eyed work has long laid bare the contradictions and hypocrisies of Italian political and cultural. The Traitor is no different. Through the prism of Tommaso Buscetta (played by the impressive Pierfrancesco Favino, who also featured in the 1999 film which starred F Murray Abraham as Buscetta), Bellochio examines the Cosa Nostra, its political affiliations (notorious Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti features) and the eventual murder of Falcone, blown to bits in his car by Riina’s Corleonesi clan in 1992. But as well as being hard-hitting The Traitor is stylish too, with episodes from Buscetta’s life story featuring in flashbacks and the man himself having ghost-at-the-feast style visions of dead friends and relatives. A masterful swansong from the last great Italian directors of the neo-realist era.