MOVIE CHOICE

THE WIFE (2017) 15 ♦

9PM, BBC2 ★★★★

Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce star in this tragicomic study of a long marriage that is about to have its cracks and flaws exposed. Close is dutiful Joan, whose author husband (Pryce) wins the prestigious Nobel Prize. In the flashback scenes, young Joan is played by Close’s daughter, Annie Starke.

JACK REACHER (2012) 15 ♦

10.45PM, ITV ★★★

Tom Cruise stars in the first of (so far) two film adaptations of the books by Lee Child. He stars as the maverick former military policeman and, as usual, supplies a great many of his own stunts to this action-packed thriller. Director and sometime actor Werner Herzog is on bad-guy duties.

WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) 12 ♦

11.30PM, BBC1 ★★★

More Tom Cruise (see left), who stars in Steven Spielberg’s big-bucks adaptation of H.G. Wells’s oft-filmed 1897 story. He’s the dad trying to make up for absent parenting of his two children (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) when an alien invasion threatens his town and the whole of humanity.