FILMS OF THE WEEK

THE BIG MOVIE

Viceroy’s House (2017) 12 Saturday, 9pm, BBC2 The partition of India and its independence from British rule in 1947 is the subject of this historical drama from the British-Indian director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham). There’s a hint of Downton Abbey, not least in the casting of Hugh Bonneville as Louis Mountbatten, who was appointed the last Viceroy of India to oversee independence and avoid partition. It was a tough job, even for such a skilled diplomat as Mountbatten, who could ‘charm a vulture off a corpse’. Mountbatten and wife Edwina (a poised Gillian Anderson, above with Bonneville) might be the key players, but the film also considers the many ordinary Indians – Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs – who were swept up in this monumental undertaking.

CLASSIC FILM CHOICE

A Bridge Too Far (1977) PG Sunday, 3.40pm, Ch5 Richard Attenborough directs this Second World War epic, which, as the title suggests, does not take a propagandist view of the war. Indeed, it dramatises an Allied campaign that failed. Operation Market Garden had the aim of infiltrating 35,000 land and air troops behind German lines via the Netherlands, seizing bridges in Nazi-occupied territory. In its depiction of this massive military endeavour, the film delivers star power, set pieces and visual spectacle in full force. The A-list ensemble cast – which includes Michael Caine (above), Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery and Dirk Bogarde among the Allied ranks – represents the breadth and complexity of the operation. Whatever the outcome, the effort is simply awe-inspiring.