Film of the week

Sunday

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, Sunday, BBC Two, 7pm

Why Four Weddings And A Funeral director Mike Newell chose not to change the atrocious title of Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ novel when bringing it to the big screen is unknowable. What isn’t is the quality of the adaptation. Sure, it has a whiff of cosy costume drama Downton Abbey about it (as well as one of its leads, Jessica Brown Findlay), but Newell has crafted a highly watchable film regardless, one which tugs at the heart-strings in much the same way as Four Weddings did.

Winsome Lily James is author Juliet Ashton, who has published one book under her own name (a Bronte biography which sold 25 copies) and many thousands more as Izzy Bickerstaff. The year is 1946 and Juliet is in the first throes of a romance with dashing American officer Markham Reynolds (Glen Powell). Meanwhile Juliet’s publisher, mentor and friend Sidney Stark (Matthew Goode) wins her a newspaper commission to write about the power of literature and, co-incidentally, she receives a letter from Guernsey pig farmer Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman). He has a book by Charles Lamb with her name and address in it and is asking if she can recommend a bookshop where he can buy another work by Lamb. Juliet sends him Tales From Shakespeare and the pair strike up a correspondence. And so she learns about the night in 1941 when Dawsey and friends Eben (Tom Courtney), Elizabeth (Findlay) and Isola (Katherine Parkinson) are stopped by German soldiers and invent a reason for why they are out after curfew: a literary society which, under the watchful eye of the occupying force, they then have to appear to run. Juliet makes the fateful decision to travel to Guernsey and write about it and them. What she finds is community, friendship and – in the events surrounding the disappearance of Elizabeth – a mystery. And then there’s dashing Dawsey, with his ruffled hair and puppy dog eyes. Perfect Sunday night viewing.

Monday

My Week With Marilyn, BBC Two, 12.50am

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) hails from privileged stock and thanks to family connections, he secures a position working as an assistant to Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, which co-stars Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). Olivier is frustrated when Marilyn fluffs takes and turns up late, so he asks Colin to win his leading lady’s trust and get her to set on time. While Colin falls under Marilyn’s spell and extinguishes a burgeoning romance with wardrobe mistress Lucy (Emma Watson), the screen siren argues with her husband, writer Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott). Adapted from Clark’s on-set diary and memoir, My Week with Marilyn is an entertaining and bittersweet drama. Adrian Hodges’s script glistens with polished one-liners and provides Williams with a show-stopping role as a cinematic icon.

Tuesday

Saving Mr Banks, BBC One, 2.45pm

Decades after Mary Poppins first charmed cinema audiences, Robert Stevenson’s magical film continues to cast a spell with its lively characters, heart-warming sentiment and hummable tunes. Yet the colour-saturated fantasy almost never materialised on the big screen. Australian-born British novelist PL Travers, who penned the series of books on which the film was based, famously rebuffed Walt Disney’s efforts to purchase the rights for more than 20 years. That infamous tug-of-war between the writer and Hollywood filmmaker is recreated in Saving Mr Banks, an elegant and witty comedy emboldened by tour-de-force performances from Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks, above.

Wednesday

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, STV, 11.30am

The childhoods of an entire generation were moulded by three simple words: “E.T. phone home”. The memories (and the tears) come flooding back from the opening frames of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece. Almost 40 years after its initial release, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial has lost none of its power to entertain and enchant. If cinematic aliens land on Earth now, they tend to be huge, snarling beasties intent on domination, not some sweet creature capable of loving a human child, played to perfection by Henry Thomas. For that reason alone we should keep this timeless classic close to our hearts. But more than that, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial reminds us of the power of cinema to transport us away from the monotony of everyday life, to a world of magic and possibility.

Thursday

Cinderella, BBC One, 3.15pm

Slavishly adapted from Disney’s classic 1950 animated musical, Kenneth Branagh’s live-action version of the fairy-tale romance doesn’t skimp on the magic. Ella (Lily James) is consigned to the kitchen by her vindictive stepmother Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett) and brattish stepsisters, Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drizella (Sophie McShera). Emboldened by the dying words of her mother (Hayley Atwell) - “Have courage and be kind” - Ella tries to rise above the bullying. When the name-calling becomes too frightful, she escapes on horseback and catches the eye of the dashing Prince (Richard Madden), who must pick a bride at the behest of the dying King (Derek Jacobi). So, the Prince throws a lavish ball where Ella makes her grand entrance then disappears as the clock chimes midnight.

Christmas Eve

Frozen, BBC One, 1.30pm

As children, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) love to play together, taking full advantage of Elsa’s ability to create ice and snow from her fingertips. When an accident almost ends in disaster, the King (Maurice LaMarche) agrees to wipe Anna’s memory so she forgets about her sibling’s hidden talents. At the same time, Elsa hides from the public gaze, fearful that she will hurt someone else with her powers. When the King and Queen are subsequently lost at sea, Elsa reluctantly emerges to claim the throne. Unfortunately, on her coronation day, her gloves come off and the locals witness her skills... Frozen is one of the best animated features to canter out of the Disney stable in years. Bell and Menzel add vim to their plucky heroines, the latter singing the film’s stand-out song Let It Go.

And one to stream …

Destroyer, BBC iPlayer

Nicole Kidman as you’ve never seen her before was the unwritten tag-line for this gritty, 2018 neo-noir from American director Karyn Kusama – to which the audience response seems to have been: “and never want to again”. The film was a box office disaster, at least by the standards of its star. But Kusama, who announced herself with 2000 indie hit Girlfight, has turned out a powerful, engrossing and supremely inventive work which earned enough in the way of critical capital to win a Best Actress nomination for its star at the 2019 Golden Globes.

Kidman certainly looks rougher, baggier, droopier, more mottled and considerably more careworn than we have ever seen her as she inhabits the role of Erin Bell, a troubled LA cop who finds her past as an undercover FBI agent catching up with her. Attending the scene of a fatal shooting she recognises a tattoo on the neck of the victim, then returns to the office to find a dye-stained bank note in her mail – a message from Silas, the lethal and psychotic bank-robber whose gang she infiltrated 16 years earlier alongside colleague Chris (Sebastian Stan).

“Silas is back” she tells Gil Lawson (Toby Huss), her only remaining contact at the FBI. Back in her head, she means. What follows is a series of flashbacks to the undercover operation, while in the present day we follow Erin’s obsessive revenge mission as she tracks down the former gang members one by one to reach Silas. On top of that she has a chaotic personal life to deal with in the form of 16-year-old daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn). Erin’s former partner Ethan (Scott McNairy), who isn’t Shelby’s biological father, does his patient best with the girl, but she is going off the rails big-time by falling in with drug-dealing ne’er-do-well Jay (Beau Knapp).

Destroyer isn’t flawless, but it’s a weighty piece of work which examines the power of love and the corrosive influence of guilt on a person. As with Kusama’s 2009 film Jennifer’s Body, also a flop but since rehabilitated (“a forgotten feminist classic” according to one critic), it could yet hit cult status.