MONDAY April 18

Beauty and the Beast (2017) ✰✰✰✰ (BBC1, 2.30pm) Strong-willed bookworm Belle (Emma Watson) rebuffs the amorous advances of preening Gaston (Luke Evans), who wonders how he’ll know when he is in love. Before Gaston can find out, Belle trades places with her inventor father Maurice (Kevin Kline) as the eternal prisoner of an accursed Beast (Dan Stevens) in his crumbling stronghold. The gloom of incarceration is lifted by the kindness of enchanted servants, including flirtatious candlestick Lumiere (Ewan McGregor) and clinking teapot Mrs Potts (Emma Thompson) – and by her growing bond with her captor. Beauty and the Beast is a ravishing live-action remake of the 1991 Disney animation, and if Bill Condon’s picture doesn’t quite scale the dizzy heights of its predecessor, it comes delightfully close.

Official Secrets (2019) ✰✰✰✰ (BBC2, 10.00pm) Premiere A British spy risks her freedom “to stop a war and save lives” in the slow-burning thriller Official Secrets. Based on the true story of whistleblower Katharine Gun, who leaked top-secret information to the press in 2003 as Tony Blair prepared to take Britain to war in Iraq, director Gavin Hood’s picture bristles with indignation at a political establishment willing to manufacture a narrative to justify military intervention. Knightley brings steely determination, fragility and naivete to her role, portraying her mild-mannered informant as a reluctant heroine, who risks being crushed in the gear wheels of a well-oiled government machine, even if the fire in Gun’s belly fails to ignite Hood’s conventional dramatisation.