TV FILMS OF THE WEEK
THE LADY VANISHES Sunday, BBC2, 1.35pm
A Hitchcock classic, with Margaret Lockwood as Iris Henderson, a wealthy young Englishwoman whose European holiday is coming to an end. At an unscheduled hotel stop, she befriends a governess, Miss Froy, and the pair board the train together. But then Miss Froy suddenly disappears…
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW Sunday, Channel 5, 5.50pm
Even more plausible now than at the time of its 2004 release, with paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) warning that thanks to climate change the world faces a new ice age within the next 100 years. Then sea temperatures in the North Atlantic suddenly fall and it’s clear the cold is arriving much sooner than that...
RED SPARROW Monday, Film 4, 9pm
Jennifer Lawrence teams up with Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence for a fourth time to play Dominika Egorova, whose dance career at the Bolshoi Ballet is brought to a sudden end by injury. So, of course, it’s time to become a sexy Russian spy. First stop, Seduction School.
SHALLOW GRAVE Tuesday, Film 4, 9pm
Danny Boyle’s first feature for cinema, and such a good one, with three Edinburgh flatmates – played by a youthful Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox and Christopher Eccleston – renting out their spare room, only to find their new tenant dead one morning. But with a suitcase full of cash.
MR BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE Wednesday, BBC2, 1pm
Think of this likeable Cary Grant comedy as an early – very early, it was made in 1948 – episode of Grand Designs, with Grant as the New York advertising man who dreams of building his perfect house in the peaceful Connecticut countryside. To the surprise of surely no one, things do not go smoothly.
EDUCATING RITA Thursday, BBC4, 9pm
Rita is a young Liverpudlian hairdresser who dreams of completing her education before settling down to have children with her husband. She’s all bubbly enthusiasm, but the Open University professor she signs up with is a disillusioned drunk in an unhappy marriage. Julie Walters (left) and Michael Caine co-star.
21 JUMP STREET Friday, ITV2, 9pm
Based on an American TV series from the 1980s that starred Johnny Depp, the film version sees Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as two bungling but still youthful-looking rookie policemen sent back to high school on an undercover drugs mission. Rude, crude and surprisingly funny.
EMPIRE OF THE SUN Friday, BBC2, 11.20pm
Future Batman star Christian Bale was only 13 when he was in this spectacular Steven Spielberg adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s semiautobiographical novel about a young British boy growing up in Shanghai… until the Second World War breaks out.