Film choice

Whisky Galore! (1969, b/w) BBC TWO, 3.25PM ★★★★★

 Compton Mackenzie helped adapt his own novel, which was inspired by a real incident where a ship bearing 50,000 cases of whisky ran aground off the Hebrides. Starved islanders, fed up with rationing, unite against English bureaucracy to sneakily scavenge the scotch from under the noses of Customs and Excise in this quietly subversive comedy. It was Ealing Studios’ first US box office hit.

A Prairie Home Companion (2006) AMC, 9.00PM ★★★

 Robert Altman’s final film is a charming comedy that meshes mortality with wistful nostalgia. It’s a reimagining of Garrison Keillor’s American radio show from which it derives its title. The final show before a philistine Texas corporation (headed by Tommy Lee Jones) shuts it down provides a backdrop for intrigues between its artists. Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan co-star.

The Dirty Dozen (1967) ITV4, 10.15PM ★★★★

 The Dirty Dozen may appear to be just another war film, but at the time it was a groundbreaking depiction of what fighting in the Second World War often entailed. (Its release at the height of the Vietnam War cannot be underestimated.) Lee Marvin and John Cassavetes lead a cast of stars, directed by Robert Aldrich, playing military prisoners in training for an apparently suicidal assault on a French château.