Hugo’s classic gets exhilarating update

Anti-Crime Squad in the Montfermeil suburb of Paris to be closer to his young son. He is assigned to shadow experienced duo Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga), who willingly bend the law to get the desired results for their chief (Jeanne Balibar).

During a hellish first day, Romany circus ringmaster Zorro threatens violence against The Mayor unless a stolen lion cub is returned within 24 hours.

When the police finally apprehend the thief, a boy called Issa, fraught exchanges between Chris, Gwada and Stephane and a baying mob of stone-throwing adolescents are captured on a drone camera piloted by Buzz.

Expanded from a 2017 short film,

Les Miserables is ambitious in scope, zig-zagging between feuding factions of a broken Parisian society. Aerial drone footage of the capital offers a brief respite from testosterone-soaked confrontations, which Ly stages with brio. Characters are sketched in broad strokes with limited time to flesh out complex motivations beyond hand-tomouth survival, underpinned by the bad-cop/good-cop dynamic of Chris and Stephane, which warps as the latter’s induction day reaches its shattering climax.

Viewed through Ly’s lens, Hugo may have been misinformed when he declared there are no bad men.

THE NEW MUTANTS (15)** Stars:

Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy,

Blu Hunt and Charlie Heaton

Josh Boone

94 mins

James Mangold’s 2017 action thriller Logan was, strictly speaking, a heartrending swansong for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. However, during its explosive final reckoning, that film opened the door to a new generation of mutants in the X-Men universe.

Josh Boone’s long delayed ritesof-passage drama slams the door shut again. The New Mutants draws inspiration from super-powered

Marvel Comics characters who embark on fantastical adventures separate from Professor Xavier’s other gifted youngsters.

Alas, there is nothing remarkable about Boone’s film, which taps into the adolescent angst of his previous picture, The Fault In Our Stars, and channels those raging hormones into a hoary horror set in an abandoned hospital that yearns to replicate the chilling isolation of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.

As a lumbering tale of things that go bump in the night, The New Mutants delivers only fitful shivers including a prolonged encounter with eyeless demons, whose design suggests an unholy alliance between the Pale

Man from Pan’s Labyrinth and alien archvillain Venom.

of location (slightly seedy London, flats above shops), and above all the will-they-won’t-they-oh-get-on-withit relationship between Strike and Robin. There is plenty of mileage in that yet.

Everybody back on the bus for the next stop on the magical autumn drama tour. It was Glasgow, 1937, down by the docks. A man was running through the streets and he was not being chased (except by his dog). He was exercising. Of his own free will. Well, now. I know we wanted some escapism, but what madness was this?

It was the reboot of All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5, Tuesday) and it was braw. Everything seemed different from the BBC series. Different Siegfried, different James (obviously Scottish for a start), different Mrs Hall. Yet it was all instantly familiar and thereby comforting.

As any fan of the previous adaptations should know, no trip to the Dales would be complete without sight of a certain veterinary procedure. As the hour flew by and James got the job with Siegfried, then lost the job, I began to think the director had forgotten the essential scene. But we got there in the end. James, called to help a cow in labour, finally put his arm where the sun doesn’t shine. We even got the action in close up. Twice.

As an added treat there had been no mucking about with the theme tune. All of that and Tricky Woo and Tristan are yet to make an appearance. I have a good feeling about this one.

As an edgy British comedy, Two Weeks to Live (Sky One, Wednesday) had no desire to cosy up to the viewer. Appearances were deceptive, however. Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) played Kim, a young woman brought up in the wilds of Scotland believing the end of the world was nigh. Trained to survive the apocalypse, Kim had a lot of skills but she had never been in a pub before, used money, walked in high heels, any of that. She was so unworldly, indeed, that she was fooled by two lads into thinking the end really was a fortnight away, and she had to crack on with job she came to do: find her father’s killer and take revenge. Williams had a nicely subtle comic touch, trying to come across as a bad ass only to poke herself in the eye with her sunglasses, and the first half hour episode rattled along. Physical comedy aside, it was light on gags though, which doesn’t bode well, even for a dark comedy. Especially for a dark comedy.

Darwin College, Cambridge, received a lesson in the survival of the smartest when they took on St Andrews in

The final scores on the doors were 90 for Darwin and a stonking 255 for St Andrews. “Bad luck,” Paxo told the southerners. Paxo feeling sorry for you: now that is brutal.