HOLY ROLES: Nuns on film

Bad Habits, Holy Orders (10pm, Ch5) follows young women getting a taste of convent life. Cinema has a long history of quality films about nuns. Here’s our pick of four of the best…

The Nun’s Story (1959) Audrey

Hepburn stars in this drama, inspired by the life of Marie Louise Habets. Hepburn befriended Habets, who later nursed the actress back to health after she fell from her horse while filming

The Unforgiven (1960).

Lilies Of The Field (1963) Sidney Poitier won an Oscar for his performance as a drifter who meets a group of Catholic nuns who fled Europe, and helps them to build a chapel.

Lilia Skala, herself an Austrian emigre, costars as the forthright Mother Maria.

The Trouble With Angels (1966) Hayley Mills is the troublesome teenager clashing with Rosalind

Russell’s Reverend Mother in Ida Lupino’s lively comedy. Causing mischief in the convent school, Mary Clancy (Mills) eventually gets a wake-up call.

Nasty Habits (1977) British comedy satire of the Watergate scandal, based on Muriel Spark’s novel The Abbess Of Crewe. Glenda Jackson plays the Nixon role, a sister who bugs the convent to discredit her rival for the position of abbess, unleashing a very public scandal.