Sports Calendar

Wednesday

RAISING CAIN (1992)
ITV1, 11pm

Brian De Palma specialises in psycho- thrillers full of slow-motion terror and lurid revelations, usually spiced with homages to Alfred Hitchcock. Made between his more mainstream studio films, Raising Cain is a high-gloss pulp shocker about the schizophrenic twin sons of a deranged child psychologist, a juicy trio of roles all played with lip-licking relish by John Lithgow. Stirring in a subtext of child abuse, De Palma teasingly hints that both sons could be the product of the same twisted mind. Raising Cain is a guilty pleasure, but wonderfully engrossing. (91min)

AIR AMERICA (1990)
BBC One, 11.15pm; BBC Wales, 11.55pm

Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr co-star in Roger Spottiswoode’s action comedy about the secret CIA airline that covertly delivered guns, drugs and other illicit cargo during the Vietnam War. Air America started life as a more serious political thriller, but lost much of its bite when it was retailored as a star vehicle for Gibson. All the same, the Australian superstar is excellent as a bullish adrenalin junkie who initially turns a blind eye to the moral consequences of his daredevil airborne antics. (112min)

Thursday

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE (1957, b/w)
Channel 4, 1.40pm

A strong performance by John Mills anchors The Vicious Circle, a compact crime thriller that explores suburban normality and guilt-racked paranoia. Dr Howard Latimer (Mills) calls in Scotland Yard after discovering a dead German actress in his flat, only to find himself accused of her murder. The lost England portrayed here is a comforting realm of rain-coated detectives and bumbling retired majors, but with an undercurrent of Kafkaesque conspiracy. (84min)

THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT (1998)
BBC Two, 12.20am

A thoroughly English courtroom comedy about class snobbery and mistaken identity, The Tichborne Claimant is based on real events. A boozy heir, who was thought to have been lost at sea years earlier, returns to Britain and mounts a legal battle for his family fortune. In fact, the bogus claimant (Robert Pugh) is an Irish-Australian butcher who has agreed to split the proceeds with an embittered family retainer (John Kani). Despite the budget restrictions, David Yates musters a fine cast of old luvvies, including John Gielgud and Robert Hardy. (98min)

Friday

THE HUNTED (2003)
Sky Movies 1, 8pm

Benicio Del Toro stars as Aaron Hallam, an emotionally disturbed Kosovo war veteran who becomes a killer on the run in The Hunted. Tommy Lee Jones plays the special forces expert who trained Hallam, and is therefore given the job of capturing him in the Oregon wilderness. The plot may sound familiar, inviting comparison with Jones in The Fugitive a decade before, but the veteran director William Friedkin once again proves himself to be a master of visceral, hard- knuckled chase thrillers. (94min)

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)
Sky Cinema 1, 10pm

It may have been a critical and commercial flop on its release, but Charles Laughton’s sole excursion behind the camera is now considered a masterpiece. Night of the Hunter is a hugely atmospheric Gothic fable that stars Robert Mitchum as a chillingly impassive bogus preacher with “love” and “hate” tattooed across his knuckles. Playing the would-be child killer Harry Powell, Mitchum drifts through a dreamlike landscape of Expressionist shadows and biblical symbolism. (109min)

TOGETHER (2000)
BBC Four, 11.30pm

Written and directed by the Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson, Together is a warm-hearted retro- comedy set in a suburban hippie commune in 1970s Malmö. Assorted trust-fund revolutionaries and dropout housewives struggle to create a free- love Utopia of lentil curry and sexual experimentation, but their radical zeal and petty bickering never quite succeeds in toppling the capitalist system. Moodysson concentrates on the tragicomic humour of the situation, but also highlights the blinkered naivety of the adults and the potential emotional damage inflicted on their children. There is terrific use of Abba on the soundtrack, too. (106min)

A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS (1999)
BBC Two, 12.30am; not Scotland

There are echoes of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in this superb black comedy from the maverick director Shane Meadows, a handsomely shot rites-of-passage tale about dysfunctional families in a small Midlands town. Inspired by real events in the director’s childhood, A Room for Romeo Brass stars Andrew Shim and Ben Marshall (below) as teenage neighbours who fall under the spell of an emotionally damaged sociopath, played brilliantly with an edge of comic menace by Paddy Considine. Meadows and Considine recently collaborated again on the gritty revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes, which is currently on general release. (86min)

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