The existential dread of Sunday night has always been a mindkiller, but it used to be much, much worse. Long before we could safely vegetate before endless hours of Skibidi Toilet or doom-scroll ourselves to sleep with smartphones crab-clawed to our chests, there were the bad old days of linear television: four terrestrial channels and the kind of Sunday evening programmings whose theme tunes – Last of the Summer Wine, Songs of Praise, Antiques Roadshow – can still induce involuntary gag reflexes even decades later.
For those of a certain age and disposition, the dying days of the 20th century did, however, offer a weird, wonderful escape hatch: Moviedrome. Running from 1988 to 2000, the show offered a carefully curated deep dive into “cult” film, memorably presented by Alex Cox (1988-1994), director of movies including Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, and the filmmaker and documentarian Mark Cousins (1997-2000). It lifted the lid on everything from outrageous horror and sci-fi tales to film noir masterpieces and psychedelic Westerns. With Moviedrome, it was possible to tune into Jean-Luc Godard’s stylish Alphaville one week and be assailed by a film about a giant pig running amok in the Australian outback the next. Now, a special two-month season at London’s BFI explores the series in all its glory, covering once-reviled classics like Scarface, Get Carter and The Wicker Man to lesser-knowns like The Great Silence and California Dolls.
