Saturday

Film of the week

Downton Abbey, STV, 8.30pm

The only thing better than a costume drama is a costume drama with added royals, and Julian Fellowes’s 2019 big screen adaptation of his own blockbuster drama series serves it up in king-sized slices. Conceived shortly after the series ended in 2016, the film jumps forward from the year in which we left the Crawley family – 1925 – and opens with Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) receiving a letter from Buckingham Palace informing him that King George V and his sizeable entourage will be landing on the family for a night during a royal tour of Yorkshire. Haughty dowager countess Lady Violet (Maggie Smith) isn’t best pleased, however: the queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) is some kind of cousin, though a family feud about an inheritance Violet feels should go to Robert means the two women haven’t spoken in years.

But the flurry of activity the news causes upstairs is nothing to the below-stairs commotion as Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nichol) busies herself picking out recipes and stocking up on goodies, and butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) sets to polishing everything in sight. Unfortunately Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) thinks Barrow isn’t up to the job and brings old trooper Carson (Jim Carter) out of retirement for one last shot at glory – then Mrs Patmore is gazumped by the arrival of the king’s snotty French chef Monsieur Courbet (Philippe Spall), who says he’s in charge of all food preparation and menu decisions. In every other area the faithful Downton staff find themselves being replaced (and, worse, looked down on and sneered at) as the members of the royal household assert their authority. All except the king’s valet Ellis (Max Brown), who strikes up a friendship with Barrow.

As a series of low-level skirmishes ensue in the servants’ quarters, the Crawleys do their best with their royal guests. But who exactly is Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton), Lady Bagshaw’s enigmatic young companion? Why is Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the Irish Republican chauffeur who ran off with youngest Crawley girl Lady Sibyl, being questioned so closely by the mysterious Major Chetwode (Stephen Moore)? And is the York nightclub Ellis invites Barrow to all that it seems?

If you’ve watched Gosford park recently – it’s streaming on Netflix so there’s still time – then be warned: Fellowes’s script for that film was in a different league entirely to this one. Even Maggie Smith’s finely honed put-downs feel like they were compiled using an online Oscar Wilde Witticism Generator. Still, if it’s sunny, brainless New Year’s Day fare you’re after, you could do worse.

Sunday

Mary Queen Of Scots, BBC Two, 9pm

In 1561, a Protestant queen, Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie), rules England. Her power is threatened by the return of 18-year-old Catholic cousin Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) from France. Many English Catholics believe Mary is the legitimate heir to the English throne. While figures close to the Scottish queen plot against her, including Protestant cleric John Knox (David Tennant) and her half-brother, the Earl of Moray (James McArdle), men in Elizabeth's court attempt to manoeuvre their monarch on to a path of civil war. Spanning 26 years of political chicanery and betrayal, Mary Queen of Scots is a restrained affair which drips copious blood on screen but has little running through its veins. Ronan and Robbie command their scenes with tub-thumping support from a largely homegrown cast.

Monday

The Peanut Butter Falcon, BBC Two, 10pm

Zak (Zack Gottsagen) is 22 years old and has Down’s Syndrome. He lives in residential care in North Carolina, where kindly nurse Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) keeps a close eye on him along with elderly residents, who don’t share Zak’s obsession with pro wrestler Salt Water Redbrick (Thomas Haden Church). Zak yearns to escape and to enrol in a wrestling school. With the help of elderly resident Carl (Bruce Dern), Zak slips out of his room and sneaks aboard a boat down by the docks. Fisherman Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) steals the craft and when he discovers the stowaway, he initially intends to leave Zak on the shore. However, a tender bond starts to form in this charming, well-acted adventure.

Tuesday

Rocketman, Film 4, 9pm

Taron Egerton dons the rhinestone glasses, sequinned jumpsuits and platform boots to take on the role of Elton John in this biopic of the flamboyant singer. Directed by Dexter Fletcher – who already had a bit of practice helming musical movies, having worked on Bohemian Rhapsody – the film details Elton’s breakthrough years, touching on his relationships with his lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and manager-lover John Reid (Richard Madden). It also doesn’t shy away from the singer’s troubles with addiction. But whereas the Queen movie was a straight nuts-and-bolts narrative, this is anything but. Typical of anything made in Elton’s name, it’s a fantasy version of the singer’s life, jumping around from one time period to another, and using the most appropriate songs for that point. This one’s for you.

Wednesday

The World’s End, STV, 10.50pm

Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright’s loosely linked ‘Cornetto trilogy’ comes to a satisfying end with this sci-fi comedy. A prologue set in June 1990 sketches the bonds of friendship between five teenagers, who fail to complete a crawl of 12 local pubs, which would have culminated in a final glorious pint at The World’s End. Two decades later, the ringleader of that motley crew, Gary King (Simon Pegg), decides to bring the ‘lads’ – Andrew (Nick Frost), Steven (Paddy Considine), Oliver (Martin Freeman) and Peter (Eddie Marsan) – back together to complete the booze-fuelled feat known as The Golden Mile. Old resentments and romantic rivalries begin to emerge, but then Gary makes a startling discovery about the apparently sleepy town.

Thursday

In The Heart Of The Sea, BBC One, 10.35pm

Director Ron Howard’s sprawling maritime adventure dramatises the real-life disaster that inspired Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. Melville (Ben Whishaw) visits emotionally troubled seaman Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) at his home on Nantucket Island. In flashback, he recalls how inexperienced captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) stood nervously at the helm of whaling ship the Essex, at the behest of the owners, Messrs Mason (Donald Sumpter) and Fuller (Richard Bremmer). However, the crew, including Matthew Joy (Cillian Murphy), looked to strapping First Mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) for their orders. One thousand leagues along the equator, the Essex encounters a monstrous creature of the deep, which rams the vessel and leaves the men stranded far from home.

Friday

Sea Fever, Film 4, 11.05pm

The ragtag crew of an Irish fishing boat goes into self-quarantine after a close encounter with a tentacled, bioluminescent organism in writer-director Neasa Hardiman’s slow-burning 2019 thriller. Tapping into timely concerns about isolation, self-preservation and mental well-being, Sea Fever dredges Alien and The Abyss for its initial dramatic set up. Marine biology student Siobhan (Hermione Corfield) hopes to avoid heading out to sea to study life at close quarters until her professor (Dag Malmberg) intervenes. Begrudgingly, Siobhan boards the fishing vessel Niamh Cinn Oir skippered by Gerard (Dougray Scott) and his wife Freya (Connie Nielsen), who need a big haul to keep the debtors at bay. Tensions are stoked when Gerard secretly charts a course into an exclusion zone, forbidden to fishing crews, and the boat collides with something gargantuan lurking beneath the waves.

And one to stream …

The Hand Of God, Netflix

Having dissected Italian history, culture and politics in films such as The Great Beauty, Il Divo (about former Italian PM Giulio Andreotti) and Loro (about Silvio Berlusconi and his hangers-on), award-winning, Naples-born director Paolo Sorrentino turns the camera on his own life in this bitter-sweet coming-of-age story. A winner at September’s Venice Film Festival, it has been nominated for a Golden Globe and has also made the Oscar shortlist – unsurprising given Sorrentino’s already laden trophy cabinet.

The place is Naples, the period the mid-1980s. Teenager Fabio Schisa (Filippo Scotti) lives in a flat with parents Saverio (Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo) and Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), and elder brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert). Among his loud, irascible and colourful extended family is aunt Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri), on whom he has the mother of all crushes, and he spends is days moping around the city and dreaming about whether or not the great Diego Maradona will sign for Napoli. He does, of course, and the Argentine’s on-field feats form the backdrop to the story as tragedy befalls Fabio.

The film opens with aunt Patrizia apparently meeting San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples (she’s waiting at a bus stop and he picks her up in his Rolls Royce limo) and then the Little Monk, a figure of Neapolitan myth. As the film closes, Fabio will have a similar encounter though by then he has set himself on a new path after an encounter with real-life film director Antonio Capuano (played by Ciro Capano).

A love letter to Naples and to cinema, and a memorial of sorts to the people and events which shaped him, The Hand Of God isn’t Sorrentino’s strongest film, but its strength comes from its being his most personal.