Saturday

Splash, Channel 5, 1.05pm

A lonely bachelor (Tom Hanks) is rescued from drowning by a beautiful woman (Darryl Hannah), who later tracks him down to New York. Even though she doesn’t own any clothes, initially doesn’t speak English and claims she can’t stay for longer than six days, the pair fall in love, but what he doesn’t know is that she’s really a mermaid. However, an eccentric scientist (Eugene Levy) has discovered her secret. Splash has a decent script and an intriguing premise, but this romantic comedy wouldn’t have been half as funny or charming if it wasn’t so perfectly cast. The glamorous but slightly otherworldly Hannah makes a great fish out of water, and she has convincing chemistry with the ever-likeable Hanks. There’s also expert support from Levy and the scene-stealing John Candy as Hanks’s uncouth brother. For an altogether weirder twist on mermaids, check out Curtis Harrington’s cult 1961 B-movie Night Tide. Currently streaming on MUBI, it’s based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem and stars a young Dennis Hopper.

Sunday

The Sisters Brothers, BBC Two, 10pm

Eli Sisters (John C Reilly) and his scrawny younger brother Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) are assassins for hire in 1851 Oregon. They agree to complete one final job for their powerful employer, The Commodore (Rutger Hauer), who commissions the siblings to kill gold prospector Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed). He has perfected a volatile chemical compound that reveals priceless nuggets of metal concealed in riverbeds. A private detective named John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) is already on Warm’s trail and will lead the unsuspecting target into the brothers’ clutches. Phoenix lassoes the showier role in this offbeat caper, but it’s Reilly who repeatedly shoots to kill with his portrayal of a man of cool logic, who is prepared to sacrifice everything – including himself – to protect his kin.

Monday

Erin Brockovich, 5STAR, 11.30pm

Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is a sassy, twice-divorced single mum who has learned the hard way that there is only one person in this life she can rely upon – herself. So, she talks her way into a junior position at Albert Finney’s law office, where she stumbles upon medical records relating to a community ravaged by an abnormally high number of serious illnesses. An Oscar-winning Roberts turns in the best performance of her career, capturing the abrasive, sometimes infuriating, though ultimately courageous spirit of a woman whose desire to fight for the rights of the underdog rewrote American legal history. Director Steven Soderbergh is at the top of his game again here, bringing out the humanity and daring in Erin’s quest without ever resorting to emotional manipulation to secure the audience’s support.

Tuesday

First Man, Film 4, 9pm

Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) is a key participant in the space race between America and the Soviet Union during the 1960s. He forges a close working relationship with Nasa chief Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler) and fellow astronaut Ed White (Jason Clarke), who becomes the first American to walk in space. However, tragedy casts a long shadow over Neil and his wife Janet (Claire Foy) as the couple struggle to cope with the death of their young daughter Karen. The biopic of the first man on the moon was originally set to be directed by Clint Eastwood, but Damien Chazelle eventually did the honours, adding another masterpiece to his already impressive CV, which also includes La La Land and Whiplash.

Wednesday

Sexy Beast, Film 4, 11.05pm

Retired safe-cracker Gal is living it up in Spain when he receives an unwanted visit from Don Logan, an old underworld contact. Logan desperately wants to recruit Gal for a bank vault job, but Gal isn’t interested. However, Logan is determined to get his man, leading to a violent confrontation that ends in disaster – and a meeting with a hard-bitten London gangster. It’s brilliantly directed by former music video auteur Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin), and features career-best performances from the likes of Ben Kingsley (who received an Oscar nomination) and Ray Winstone. Ian McShane also stars with Amanda Redman, James Fox and Cavan Kendall.

Thursday

Film of the week

Vivarium, Film 4, 10.45pm

Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg and British actress Imogen Poots join forces in this sci-fi-horror curio from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan, billed as the perfect self-isolation movie on its release in 2020 – perfect as in absolutely what you do not want to be watching if you’re locked up in your house for a spell – and here making its terrestrial TV bow.

Eisenberg and Poots play young couple Tom and Gemma, tree surgeon and primary school teacher respectively. They’re trying to buy a house together, a quest which leads them to the creepily weirdly showroom of a development called Yonder. There they meet creepily weird salesman Martin (Jonathan Aris) who persuades them to take a look at Yonder and shows them inside Number 9, one of row upon row of identical green houses. Gemma plays along but Tom is rude and dismissive and, when Martin disappears as the couple are inspecting the garden, suggests they head for home – which is where the trouble begins. They can’t find the exit but what they do find is that every road leads back to Number 9. When the car runs out of petrol, they bed down for the night and the next morning a box of food has been delivered to their doorstep. The following day, another box but this time it contains a baby. ‘Raise him and be released’ reads the cryptic message accompanying the strangely placid infant.

The child grows at an alarming rate and after a few days has morphed into a boy with Brylcreemed hair dressed in a buttoned-up white shirt and black trousers. When he wants feeding, he emits an ear-piercing scream. He imitates Tom and Gemma and insists on calling her Mother. As day follows day, the couple turn to very different coping mechanisms, which in turn causes a rift between them. Can they escape? Where did Martin go? And who (or, more likely, what) is the boy? Finnegan and scriptwriter Garret Shanley provide some, though not all, of the answers.

Friday

The Bourne Supremacy, ITV, 11.05pm

Two years after losing his memory in The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon’s resourceful CIA operative finds himself embroiled in a deadly new game of cat and mouse when he is framed for the murder of two US agents during a botched stakeout overseen by Agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen). Director Paul Greengrass’s twitchy, handheld direction invests The Bourne Supremacy with an edgy, nervous quality, reflecting Jason’s sense of unease as he tries to outwit his foes. The camerawork is especially effective during the breath-taking car chases which bookend the film. Damon delivers a compelling lead performance, coping admirably with the physical exertions of the role which leave his hero battered and bruised by the adrenaline-pumping finale.

And one to stream …

The Big Short, Amazon Prime/MUBI

Director Adam McKay’s latest film Don’t Look Up has been receiving mixed reviews since its arrival on Netflix last month. This 2015 film about the causes of the 2007 financial collapse fared better, winning a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph.

The source material is Michael Lewis’s 2010 non-fiction best-seller The Big Short: Inside The Doomsday Machine, a forensic analysis of the what, who, when, why and how of the whole shebang. Brad Pitt, who produced and starred in a previous adaptation of a Lewis book, Moneyball, also produces here and has a small role as semi-retired financial whizz Ben Rickert. But the star turns go to Steve Carell as trader Mark Baum, Christian Bale as eccentric but brilliant hedge fund owner Dr Michael Burry, and Ryan Gosling as banker Jared Vennett, whose straight-to-camera addresses see him also function as the film’s narrator.

It’s Burry who has the vision to see the problems inherent in the sub-prime mortgage market and find a way to ‘short it’, or bet against it. With property viewed as being literally as safe as houses, any banker he meets is prepared to take his bet and his money. More fool them. At the same time Vennett teams up with Baum and his small crew – among them Succession’s Jeremy Strong as numbers guy Vinnie Daniel – to do more or less the same thing. Meanwhile aspiring traders Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), who run a company called Brownfield from a garage in Colorado, find a copy of Vennett’s prospectus and, like him and Burry, put two and two together. With Rickert in tow, they too join the big short.

Being high finance it’s chewy stuff for the most part, but McKay has some inventive techniques for explaining it all. Dictionary-style definitions pop up on screen, and in one scene economist Richard Thaler and pop star Selena Gomez play themselves using a casino roulette game to explain how a collateralised debt obligation (CDO) works and the part played by so-called ‘synthetic’ CDOs in the financial collapse.

There are no heroes here – all the principals end up making money, even as millions are thrown out of their homes – and a sobering end-piece underlines how quickly the corruption and double-dealing has returned to the financial sector. But if you need a reason to hate capitalism and want to be entertained at the same time, this is the film for you.