Pet Shop Boys At The BBC FILM CHOICE

LAURENCE PHELAN

complete with clowns, fire-eaters and trapeze artists – a psychedelic circus. On the bill are the somewhat unhinged Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull, The Who and an impromptu supergroup known as the Dirty Mac, comprising legends John Lennon, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and more.

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9pm, BBC Four

The enduring pop maestros – “West End Girls” quite recently came top of a list of best No 1s of all time – are honoured here. The tribute also features collaborations with Liza Minnelli (“Losing My Mind”), Dusty Springfield (“What Have I Done to Deserve This?”) and David Bowie (“Hallo Spaceboy”).

FILM OF THE DAY Oppenheimer

5pm, Sky Cinema Premiere (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

One could argue that all the flashy narrative effects Christopher Nolan uses in his seven-Oscar-winning biographical epic about J Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project – the cross-cutting and flashbacks and flashfowards – betray a lack of faith in his material, and that the rousing filmic grandiosity risks overpowering some of the human stories here. But then it is also about the most fundamental physics and the most consequential history and politics mankind has ever known, so, fair’s fair. Cillian Murphy (left) is magnetic as the haunted genius at the centre of it all; the supporting cast are A-list.

=== Dark Waters

11.05pm, BBC Two

(Todd Haynes, 2019) Real-life little-guy-against-thesystem drama, starring Mark Ruffalo as a lawyer doggedly building a case on behalf of the West Virginian townspeople whose land and water supply were polluted by a cancercausing fluorocarbon.

=== Croupier

12.30am, Film4

(Mike Hodges, 1998)

Slick neo-noir with Clive Owen very good as a frustrated novelist who takes a job as a croupier in a swanky London casino and winds up involved with a femme fatale (Alex Kingston) and her plan to rob his place of work.