TV FILMS OF THE WEEK

JURASSIC PARK Sunday, ITV, 5.45pm

With a third Jurassic World film due out next year, our favourite dinosaur franchise is definitely back up and running. So it’s worth going back to the 1993 original to see how it all began, with Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and the much-missed Richard Attenborough (right with Dern and Neill) leading the human cast and director Steven Spielberg marshalling them and the true stars of the film, the dinosaurs.

APOLLO 13 Monday, ITV4, 3.45pm

The recent 50th anniversary of man walking on the Moon spawned two wonderful films, First Man and Apollo 11. But the picture made 25 years ago about the disastrous 1970 Apollo 13 mission is pretty decent too, with Ron Howard definitely hitting his stride as a director and a fine cast led by Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon and Kathleen Quinlan.

SUPER 8 Monday, Film 4, 6.45pm

Directed by J.J. Abrams, produced by Steven Spielberg and set in the late 1970s, this is one-part homage to the likes of E.T., and one-part possible inspiration for the Netflix hit Stranger Things. Look out for a young – and very good – Elle Fanning as one of the gang of young teenagers making a zombie film who witness a terrifying train crash.

THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS Tuesday, BBC2, 3.05pm

Made straight after Citizen Kane, this is the Orson Welles production that makes film buffs weep, thanks to RKO insisting that more than 30 minutes be cut from the original running time. Nevertheless, its intelligence, technical ingenuity and ever more prescient doubts about ‘progress’ – particularly the invention of the motor car – still shine through.

BIG FISH Wednesday, Sony Movies, 4.30pm

So easy to dismiss as typical Tim Burton fodder, packed full of circus grotesques and other assorted oddities (left). But pay attention and what emerges is the most touching tale of parental love, as a journalist son (Billy Crudup) returns home to say goodbye to his dying but still infuriating father, played at different stages by Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney.

May well prompt tears.

BEAST Thursday, Film 4, 9pm

Jessie Buckley – so good in the Miss World film, Misbehaviour – is superb here as the vulnerable Jersey woman whose handsome new admirer – played by the equally good Johnny Flynn – might just be a serial killer.

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS Friday, Film 4, 6.25pm

Shailene Woodley is so natural and affecting here as a teenager with cancer that one can forgive the 2014 film’s occasional lapse into mawkishness or cliché. Ansel Elgort (later in Baby Driver and The Goldfinch) is pretty good too.