From The Martian to Logan, the week's best TV films

Spanish filmmaker Iciar Bollain and Scottish husband Paul Laverty, Ken Loach’s go-to screenwriter, chart the rise of Cuban ballet superstar Carlos Acosta in a biographical drama framed by dance sequences performed by the charismatic subject himself. In the early 1980s, the young Carlos (Edilson Manuel Olbera Nunez) – who is nicknamed Yuli – explores his love of dance by performing with kids in the neighbourhood. This passion for gyrating to Michael Jackson grates on Carlos' macho father, a truck driver called Pedro (Santiago Alfonso), who decides to test his son's resolve. He forces the lad to audition for the National Ballet School. Carlos is initially reluctant to engage with ballet because he believes that everyone will assume he is gay if he wears tights. However, one of the school's tutors, Chery (Laura De La Uz), coaxes Carlos out of his shell and nurtures his raw, undeniable talent.

Sunday

Monster-in-Law, Channel 5, 1.45pm

During a long and illustrious movie career, Jane Fonda has appeared in many films but few of them have been comedies. Sure, she raised a smile or two in the 1960s and 1970s with the likes of Barefoot In The Park, Cat Ballou and the original Fun With Dick And Jane, but she spent most of her time taking the lead in dramas such as Coming Home(worthy) and Klute (weird), winning Oscars for both. In 1990 Fonda quit acting, but returned 15 years later in this likeable rom-com. She takes the title role, a glamorous but nasty woman whose son Kevin (Michael Vartan) falls for dog-walker Charlie (Jennifer Lopez). They decide to marry, but the matriarch isn’t impressed by her prospective daughter-in-law, so launches various bizarre schemes in a bid to get rid of her. Will love conquer all?

Monday

Logan, Film 4, 9pm

World-weary Logan (Hugh Jackman) - aka Wolverine - lives under his birth name, James Howlett, in a tumbledown ranch in the desert with an albino tracker called Caliban (Stephen Merchant), who helps him to care for ailing Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Out of the blue, Logan is offered 50,000 US dollars to drive a mysterious girl called Laura (His Dark Materials' Dafne Keen) to "a place up north" called Eden. The child is a vital link to a new generation of mutants and is being pursued by Transigen head surgeon Dr Zander Rice (Richard E Grant). Logan is a grim and explosively violent swansong to one of the most iconic characters in the X-Men universe. Strong performances from Jackman and Stewart, coupled with a sparkling debut for 11-year-old Keen ensure a fitting send-off.

Tuesday

Film of the week

The Martian, Film 4, 9pm

Marking a triumphant return to the sci-fi genre after 2012’s so-so Alien prequel Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s 2015 adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel stars Matt Damon as astronaut Mark Watney, a botanist attached to a NASA Mars mission who finds himself stranded on the planet after disaster strikes the crew in the shape of the mother of all dust storms.

The film opens on day 18 of a 31 day mission, with a space-suited Watney doing whatever botanists do on a planet where nothing grows and swapping quips with systems operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara). When the storm blows in and threatens to destroy the crew’s escape rocket, commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) aborts the mission and orders an evacuation. She doesn’t use the phrase ‘Time to de-planet’, but you get the idea. On the way to the rocket, however, Watney is hit by debris and catapulted into the blinding storm. Lewis sets out to find him but his telemetry readings says his suit is punctured which essentially means he’ll be dead within a minute. She makes the fateful decision to save the rest of the crew and so the ship blasts off with one empty seat.

For Lewis and the rest, Earth is now four months away. For Watney, when he wakes up not dead, covered in sand and with a piece of metal sticking into his side, it’s just something to dream about. But, Robinson Crusoe style, he sets about making the most of his predicament, planting potatoes in the faeces of his departed crew members – handily they have been shrink-wrapped in tinfoil – and digging up a small nuclear reactor to power his landing buggy. Meanwhile, back on Earth, eagle-eyed NASA satellite operator Mindy Parks (Mackenzie Davis) has spotted something unusual at what should now be an uninhabited mission base – movement. Can she and Mars mission director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) find a way to communicate with Watney and persuade NASA head Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) to mount a rescue operation?

Jordan’s Valley of the Moon, a vast expanse of red dust and mountainous sandstone cliffs, doubles for the Mars surface and looks every bit as majestic (though much, much hotter). Damon’s performance is equally mesmerising, making for a widescreen epic as inventive as it is gripping, and well worth its seven Oscar nominations.

Wednesday

Beatriz At Dinner, BBC Two, 11.15pm

Salma Hayek is on strong from in this drama, which mixes dark comedy with social commentary. Holistic healer Beatriz (Hayek) visits the home of a client, Kathy (Connie Britton), who wants a relaxing massage before she hosts an important dinner party. When Beatriz's car won't start, Kathy invites her to stay for the meal, despite her husband Grant's (David Warshofsky) misgivings. But when the wine starts flowing, Beatriz finds herself drawn into a battle of wills with her privileged fellow guests, in particular ruthless real-estate mogul Doug Strutt (the always welcome John Lithgow), who puts profit before people.

Thursday

Paint Your Wagon, BBC Four, 8pm

Oscar-nominated musical Western about a mismatched duo’s escapades, which include sharing a wife (Jean Seberg), hijacking a stage coach and kidnapping six prostitutes. No, you’re right: it wouldn’t get made these days. Along the way there's also plenty of drinking, gambling and, yes, singing. With Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin in the leading roles, Paint Your Wagon was always going to be worth a look, and even if the idea of Clint breaking into song seems frightening, he brings his usual manliness to the screen. Marvin, meanwhile, is perfect as a rugged, lovable (ish) rogue. The film went notoriously over budget and was a box office failure when originally released, which reportedly inspired Eastwood to insist on having control over film budgets and schedules in the future. And look where that got him.

Friday

Young Guns, BBC One, 11.20pm

Six trigger-happy young outcasts become deputies so they can avenge the murder of the man who was their father figure. They're supposed to simply arrest the villains, but William Bonney – better known as Billy the Kid – opens a whole new can of worms by shooting down those responsible. Those who were teenagers in the 1980s will probably look back on this 1988 flick with some nostalgia; after all, it would more than likely have been one of the most popular movies among that age group at the time. It now seems cliched and certainly isn't entirely based on fact, but the likeable young stars are worth tuning in for alone. A sequel, Young Guns II: Blaze of Glory, was released two years later. Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland star.

And one to stream …

Blow The Man Down, Amazon Prime

A hit at the 2020 Glasgow Film Festival where it was nominated for the Audience Award, this Fargo-esque noir is directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy from their own screenplay and stars Sophie Lowe and Morgan Saylor as sisters Pris and Mary Beth Connolly, grieving their mother as the film opens but soon embroiled in a murder case which has Mary Beth’s fingerprints all over it. Literally.

The setting is Easter Cove, a tiny fishing community in a chilly-looking Maine. But Cole and Krudy undercut the gritty backdrop with a cast of oddball characters in the form of three busy-body pensioners, their former friend Enid (Margo Martindale), the Madam of a local brothel, and goofy young cop Justin Brennan (Will Brittain), grandson of one of the OAPs and starting to realise that nothing in Easter Cove quite adds up. Adding to the whimsy are regular musical interludes in which salty local fishermen break the fourth wall and sing sea shanties direct to camera.

Mary Beth’s problem is this: drunk on the evening of her mother’s wake, she leaves Pris and heads to a bar where she picks up ne’er-do-well Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). They drive to his place, but when he appears to be about to assault her she kills him with a harpoon to the throat. Pris helps her dismember the body, weigh it down in a fish container and throw it into the sea, but the sisters leave behind them a knife with the name of the family fish shop on it. Returning to retrieve it, Mary Beth is interrupted and hides. Afterwards she finds a parcel of money containing $50,000 and decides to keep it. Bad move. When a body is found in the water it looks as if the game is up, only the victim isn’t Gorski – it’s Dee, one of Enid’s ‘girls’.

Blow The Man Down is a low key, off-beat treat with more than a whiff of BBC Scotland hit Guilt about it.