Saturday
Entebbe, BBC2, 10.25pm
Shortly after Air France flight 139 departs Tel Aviv carrying predominantly Israeli and Jewish passengers, German revolutionaries Wilfried Bose (Daniel Bruhl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and their accomplices retrieve guns from hand luggage and storm the cockpit. The terrorists divert the plane to Benghazi in Libya, where Wilfried clashes with flight engineer Jacques Le Moine (Denis Menochet) during several hours on the runway to refuel. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and the rest of the cabinet, are faced with a ransom demand: the lives of the passengers in exchange for the release of prisoners. Entebbe is a tense geo-political thriller based on the real-life hijacking of an Air France flight in June 1976, although it fails to make the most of Bruhl and Pike.
Sunday
Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Channel 4, 5.30pm
All-action archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) made the perfect debut in this hugely enjoyable adventure from director Steven Spielberg and executive producer George Lucas (who also came up with the story alongside Philip Kaufman). In this first film in the much-loved franchise Indy goes in search of the legendary Ark of the Covenant, encountering Nazis and his old flame Marion (the spirited Karen Allen) along the way. Ford is perfect as the hero, although he famously wasn’t the first choice for the role – it was originally offered to Tom Selleck, who had to turn it down because of his commitment to the TV series Magnum PI.
Monday
Ghost, Channel 5, 10pm
Tissues at the ready for this 1990 romantic drama, starring Patrick Swayze as executive Sam, who seems to have the perfect life – until he’s brutally murdered. Rather than move on to the next world, he decides to hang around on Earth to help his grieving girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore) bring his killer to justice. His mission is made more complicated by the fact that the only person who can hear him is a fake psychic (Whoopi Goldberg), who is stunned to discover she really can communicate with the other side. Goldberg won an Oscar for her performance, while the love scene between Swayze, Moore and a potter’s wheel has become an iconic moment in cinema.
Tuesday
Get Carter, ITV4, 10.25pm
Jack Carter (Michael Caine) isn’t a happy man. He’s not the sort you should cross either. When his brother is killed in their hometown of Newcastle, Jack journeys north to take revenge. Vindictive, ruthless and determined to get his man, he investigates the area’s underworld, uncovering a complex case of lies, backhanders and double-dealings involving a series of unsavoury characters. Despite being a flop on its initial release, Get Carter is a gritty, low-budget masterpiece which continues to win new fans once they're over the shock of Caine trying to play a Geordie. It’s a must-see for newcomers, but even if you’ve seen it a thousand times, it’s still worth a look. At any rate, you’ll be quoting its best-known lines for weeks afterwards. Hard to believe it celebrates its 50th birthday this year.
Wednesday
Murder on the Orient Express, Film4, 9pm
The little grey cells of Agatha Christie’s moustachioed sleuth Hercule Poirot are rigorously tested in Kenneth Branagh’s handsome 2017 reimagining of the snowbound murder mystery. Poirot (Branagh) finds himself on the Orient Express in a cabin next to slippery gangster Samuel Ratchett (Johnny Depp), who offers to pay the Belgian to ensure his safety. The detective declines, but then a murderer strikes. Suspects include Ratchett’s secretary Hector MacQueen (Josh Gad), governess Mary Debenham (Daisy Ridley), former soldier Dr Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom Jr), widow Caroline Hubbard (Michelle Pfeiffer), Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Dame Judi Dench) and her maid Hildegarde Schmidt (Olivia Colman), and missionary Pilar Estravados (Penelope Cruz).
Thursday
Logan Lucky, ITV4, 11.40pm
Construction worker Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), a one-time star footballer waylaid by injury, loses his job on the same day he learns that his ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) intends to relocate to Lynchburg with her new beau. Jimmy channels his frustration into planning a heist with his one-armed brother Clyde (Adam Driver). Their target: is the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. The brothers visit convicted safe cracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) and promise to spring him out of jail for the day to access the racetrack vault. Steven Soderbergh’s entertaining crime caper makes up for a lack of plausibility with quirky characters, slick set pieces and generous belly laughs.
Friday
The Wife, BBC2, 9pm
In 1992 Connecticut, celebrated writer Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) receives a telephone call from Stockholm to confirm he has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Joe’s wife Joan (Glenn Close) celebrates with her spouse yet there is unspoken tension. The Castlemans travel to Sweden on Concorde and, mid-flight, they are pestered by muck-raking journalist Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater). He is keen to pen a biography on Joe and hopes that he can get to his unwilling subject via Joan. The prize ceremony approaches and tension between the Castlemans explodes with devastating consequences. Bjorn Runge’s slow-burning 2018 drama is draped elegantly around Close and her deeply moving performance, which secured her a seventh Oscar nomination (although she lost to Olivia Colman).
And one to stream …
On The Rocks, Apple TV
A companion piece of sorts to Lost In Translation, the film which made her name, Sofia Coppola’s latest reunites her with Bill Murray and maps the theme of that earlier film – a young woman adrift in Tokyo and having doubts about her relationship finds a friend and father figure in an older man who’s having his own troubles – onto a New York-set drama which turns on an actual father-daughter relationship. That Coppola’s own dad is veteran director Francis Ford Coppola and her lead actress, Rashida Jones, is the daughter of musician Quincy Jones, adds context and texture to the premise.
Murray is Felix Keane, a monied, womanising, globetrotting gallerist and bon viveur. Jones plays his daughter Laura Keane, who’s struggling with bringing up two young children, trying to write a novel and dealing with high-flying husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) who she thinks may be having an affair with co-worker Fiona (Jessica Henwick, aka Nymeria Sand, one of the coolest female characters in Games Of Thrones). That said, Laura’s troubles are a little hard to take: her apartment, life, children and husband are all Gap ad beautiful and when she drops in to visit her grandmother, mother and sister upstate it’s in a vast, red brick pile straight out of the pages of The Great Gatsby. Most put-upon wives would swap places with her in an instant.
So far, so gag-inducing. But it’s when Felix turns up that the film really starts to sing. Arriving one day in a red, open-topped sportscar with a bottle of Krug champagne and a tub of Beluga caviar he coaxes Laura into a series of hare-brained adventures and madcap stakeouts to prove Dean’s guilt, eventually whisking her off to Mexico. And over dinners, cocktails and ice-cream sundaes father and daughter discuss everything from male infidelity to, well, male infidelity as viewed through the prism of their own lives and relationships. Is Felix’s cynicism justified – or is Laura right when she tells him he’s just a selfish baby and that not all men are like him? To her credit, Coppola doesn’t sit on the fence.
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