TV FILMS of the week
1 MOONRAKER Today, ITV, 1.25pm
After the big budget excesses of 1977’s Bond epic The Spy Who Loved Me, Roger Moore was due to follow-up with For Your Eyes Only. Then Star Wars was released and 007 producers realised they needed to jump on the sci-fi bandwagon quick. The result is this outlandish adventure with the debonair spy out to stop a megalomaniac (yes, another one) from destroying the world and re-populating it with his superior race. Lois Chiles (who landed the part after sitting next to director Lewis Gilbert on a plane) is wonderful as the heroine Holly Goodhead, while Michael Lonsdale plays chief villain Drax.
2 A PRIVATE FUNCTION Tomorrow, Talking Pictures, 10.05pm
Alan Bennett’s comedy is set in a small Yorkshire town during 1947, when rationing was still in force. After being egged on by his wife, chiropodist Gilbert (Michael Palin, left) steals a pig being illegally raised by locals. The couple intend to eat the porker, but keeping its presence in their home a secret, not to mention killing it, isn’t easy.
3 COLLATERAL Monday, ITV4, 9pm
What starts as an ordinary day for kind-hearted Los Angeles taxi driver Max (Jamie Foxx, left) turns into a fight for survival and a rescue mission. His latest fare, Vincent (Tom Cruise) seems a nice enough guy until the charismatic customer is revealed to be a hitman tasked with killing five key witnesses in a drug trafficking trial.
4 A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Tuesday, 5STAR, 11.05pm
Wes Craven’s hit horror film was inspired by a newspaper report the writer-director read in 1983 which detailed how patients were dying in their sleep, seemingly scared to death. Craven developed the idea of maimed serial killer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, left), who haunted the children of those who had persecuted him.
5 WILDLIFE Wednesday, BBC2, 11.15pm
In this drama, Jerry Brinson (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his wife Jeanette (Carey Mulligan, left) move to 1960 Montana with their teenage son Joe (Ed Oxenbould). When Jerry gets a job as a firefighter outside town, Jeanette seeks comfort in the arms of another man – until Jerry returns home unexpectedly from working in the mountains.
6 HAMPSTEAD Thursday, Film4, 6.50pm
Drama inspired by the true story of Harry Hallowes who successfully claimed ownership of half an acre of Hampstead Heath after setting up home there. Homeless man Donald (Brendan Gleeson) has built a shack on the Heath, but his life is turned upside down when he meets an American widow (Diane Keaton, left with Gleeson).
7 ZODIAC Friday, BBC1, 11.25pm
In 1969, a serial killer known as Zodiac terrorised San Francisco. Homicide detectives Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo, left) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), San Francisco Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) and the paper’s cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) try to bring Zodiac’s reign of terror to an end.