Saturday

Perfect 10, BBC Two, 10pm

Aspiring teenage gymnast Leigh (newcomer Frankie Box) has shed her self-confidence following the death of her mother. The girl's father Rob (William Ash) is consumed by grief and neglects his daughter, whose only positive adult role model is her caring coach Gemma (Sharlene Whyte). As Leigh trains fitfully for a competition, her life is upended by the sudden arrival of an older half-brother she never knew existed. Cheeky chap Joe (Alfie Deegan) makes ends meet on the wrong side of the law and isn't afraid to involve Leigh in his light-fingered enterprises. He connects with Leigh and coaxes her out of her shell. However, Joe's influence over his half-sister has the potential to derail her future. First-time Scottish director Eva Riley coaxes strong performances out of newcomers Box and Deegan.

Sunday

They Shall Not Grow Old, BBC Two, 10.45pm

To coincide with the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson (The Lord Of The Rings trilogy) combined footage from the Imperial War Museums' extensive archive and interviews with servicemen who fought in the First World War, which was the first time that the horrors of conflict could be caught on camera. These images have been colourised and converted using the latest production techniques to offer modern audiences an unprecedented and detailed glimpse of life on the battlefields - lip readers were also brought in to reveal what the soldiers were saying. The results are incredibly moving, bringing home the horrors of the war as well as the sacrifice and bravery of those who fought.

Monday

Inception, ITV4, 9pm

Brilliant thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his team infiltrate the minds of powerful men and women and plunder their subconscious of its priceless secrets. Powerful businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) approaches Cobb with a proposition: to plant a single idea in the mind of rival Robert Fischer Jr (Cillian Murphy). Dom accepts and enlists the services of regular right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), novice dream architect Ariadne (Ellen Page), forger Eames (Tom Hardy) and chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao). However, the projection of Dom's late wife (Marion Cotillard) threatens to sabotage the mission. Director Christopher Nolan's hugely ambitious thriller cuts back and forth between the different dream-scapes with flair, showing how events in one supposed reality have dramatic repercussions in another.

Tuesday

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, Film 4, 11.15pm

Cardiac surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) meets with a mysterious 16-year-old called Martin (Barry Keoghan). A few days later, Steven invites Martin to his home and introduces the guest to his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman), 14-year-old daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and younger son Bob (Sunny Suljic). Over dinner, Martin sombrely reveals that he lost his father in a car accident so now it is just him and his mother (Alicia Silverstone). Soon after, a strange affliction takes hold of the Murphy household. Yorgos Lanthimos, director of Dogtooth and The Favourite, and regular co-writer Efthymis Filippou draw loosely on Greek mythology for their twisted and beguiling morality tale. Farrell and Kidman deliver haunting performances, while Keoghan oozes righteous rage as a son on a mission to assuage grief with a sacrifice.

Wednesday

Bacurau, Film 4, 12.55pm

Directed by Brazilian duo Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles and deserved winner of the prestigious Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes film festival, Bacurau is a dizzyingly inventive blend of political allegory, widescreen western and science-fiction romp, all set in a remote area of Brazil beset by corrupt politicians and Che Guevara-style freedom fighters.

The first half of the film sets the scene. It’s the near future and we’re in Bacurau, a small, remote village whose inhabitants hide when corrupt local mayor Tony Junior rolls into town on his re-election bandwagon and to which Teresa (Bárbara Colen) has returned for the funeral of her popular and charismatic grand-mother, Carmelita. The village is populated by characters such as Pacote (Thomas Aquino), a hitman whose exploits re-play on television crime shows in grainy security camera footage, steely local doctor Domingas (Sonia Braga), and Lunga (Silvero Pereira), a mullet-sporting outlaw waging a guerrilla war against the company which has dammed a nearby river and forced the villagers to bring in water in a truck. It’s when this truck arrives in Bacurau with its precious cargo spilling out through bullet holes, a local man sees a flying saucer shaped drone overhead and a herd of horses gallops through the village at night that things take a turn for the weird and the bloody.

The drone and the bullet holes announce the arrival of a group of British and American ‘tourists’ led by blue-eyed psychopath Michael (Udo Kier). They have arranged to have Bacurau erased from Google Maps in order to undertake some sport: the hunting down and shooting of the inhabitants, with each hunter using their choice of vintage firearm. One woman has a Chicago gangster-style machine gun, another a sawn-off shotgun. Michael himself sets out with a sniper rifle.

It’s a classic Magnificent Seven/High Plains Drifter set-up – a town under siege from apparently unscrupulous attackers – but onto that the directors graft media allegory, social and political commentary, some great characterisation (Pereira and Braga are particularly watchable), blood-splattered ultra-violence, sensational image-making and even moments of gleeful black comedy. If that all sounds like an unholy mess, don’t be afraid: Bacurau is one of the most memorable and inventive films you’ll watch all year. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Thursday

On The Town, BBC Four, 8pm

Three sailors have 24 hours of shore leave in New York and are determined to make the most of it. One of them decides to seek out the model featured in an advertising campaign, another takes a shine to an anthropologist, while a third finds himself fighting off the attentions of a female cabbie. The plot is slim to non-existent, but this exuberant musical is so brimming with energy, you really won't care. Leading men Gene Kelly, Jules Munshin and Frank Sinatra are all terrific as the sailors, the music is provided by Leonard Bernstein and the witty script and lyrics come courtesy of future Singin' In The Rain screenwriters Adolph Green and Betty Comden. The New York locations just add to the appeal. Showing in BBC Four’s new Thursday night classics slot.

Friday

A Simple Favour, BBC One, 10.45pm

Single mother and food blogger Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) strikes up a friendship with impossibly glamorous PR director Emily Nelson (a charismatic Blake Lively). When Emily calls one afternoon and asks Stephanie to pick up her son from school while she deals with an emergency, Stephanie gladly obliges. The publicist never returns to collect her child and Stephanie turns amateur sleuth to unravel the mystery. A Simple Favour is a sinfully entertaining comedy thriller, which blends a fruity cocktail of Hitchcockian whodunnit and gnarly black comedy, garnished with generous twists of spite and betrayal. Think Gone Girl with killer one-liners and perfectly shaken martinis and you'll be close to the lip-smacking delights of this depiction of intrigue in small-town suburbia.

And one to stream …

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Amazon Prime

Sacha Baron Cohen returns as fictional Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev with a sequel to 2006’s Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. Once again he takes to the road in the US to interview a succession of dupes only this time he his teenage daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) in tow. As with the original film, the full title of the sequel tells you pretty much everything you need to know in terms of backstory – it’s Delivery Of Prodigious Bribe To American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan – but in case that doesn’t do the trick the short preamble involves Borat being rehabilitated by the Kazakh president after 14 years in a gulag and sent to the US to deliver said bribe to Donald Trump. The bribe is a monkey called Johnny, only when Johnny’s crate arrives in the US it contains a human stowaway: Tutar. She ate Johnny during the voyage, so a horrified Borat decides to makes her the bribe instead and identifies Vice-President Mike Pence as the ideal recipient. After being thrown out of a Pence rally – he turns up dressed as Trump – Borat works his way down the Republican party food chain.

Much ink has been spilled over a scene in which Tutar, who has always dreamed of being a journalist, interviews Trump sidekick Rudi Giuliani in a hotel room, an interview which ends with Giuliani lying on a bed. Whether he has his hands in his trousers or is in the process of tucking in his shirt as he subsequently claimed is up to the viewer to decide. Either way the furore has made for great publicity for the film. There are other, more jaw-dropping scenes, however, and in 24-year-old Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova Baron-Cohen’s Borat has the perfect comic foil. One to enjoy amid the fall-out from Tuesday’s American Presidential election.