Pick of the week
So Long, My Son
In this heartbreaking drama from Wang Xiaoshuai, family tragedy and state intolerance weigh heavily on the lives of its central characters. In China in the 1980s, dutiful factory workers Yaojun and Liyun (pitch-perfect performances from Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei) have one young son, Xingxing, but when Liyun becomes pregnant, the communist government’s one-child rule means she has to terminate it. Then an incident involving Xingxing and his best friend Haohao throws that decision into the harshest of reliefs. The poignant story seesaws between the decades, as circumstances improve for many – but Yaojun and Liyun’s pain seems too deeply engrained for joy to creep in.
Saturday, 9pm, BBC Four
***
Inside Llewyn Davis
How far should you go as an artist to stay true to your vision? That’s the problem facing downbeat early 1960s Greenwich Village folk singer Llewyn (Oscar Isaac, holding his own in the vocal/guitar stakes). He’s surviving by couch-surfing and borrowing a few dollars while seeking a break, but misplacing a friend’s cat tips him over into a run of truly bad luck, as the New York City winter chills his blood. In the Coen brothers’ typically wry style, comedy and crisis vie for space, and the folk music scene (just) before Dylan appeared is wonderfully evoked.
Saturday, 9pm, AMC
***
Pete’s Dragon
Before he unleashes his version of Peter Pan on the world, here’s David Lowery’s entertaining take on another much-loved Disney character. When his parents die in a car crash while the family are driving through a forest, Pete (Oakes Fegley) survives and is befriended by a green dragon he names Elliot. Six years later, the now-feral child is found and taken to a logging town by Bryce Dallas Howard’s kindly ranger. It’s an adventure with King Kong vibes and a strong ecological message, as Elliot – and the trees he hides in – come under threat.
Sunday, 3pm, BBC One
***
Herself
The Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd picks another forthright female character in this empowering drama, co-written by and starring Clare Dunne. Her Dublin mother, Sandra, fleeing an abusive marriage, sees a solution to temporary accommodation in building her own house. Harriet Walter plays the well-off woman happy to donate her garden, while Conleth Hill grumps about as the builder slowly drawn in by Sandra’s desperate optimism. It’s a Loachian tale with some of the sharp edges sanded down, but it rarely loses sight of the social realities.
Monday, 11.15pm, BBC Two
***
Lynch/Oz
The manifold connections between the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz and the works of David Lynch are poked at and stretched out in this fascinating essay film. Writers such as Amy Nicholson and directors including John Waters and Karyn Kusama each take an angle – Lynch as Dorothy; red shoes and curtains; the Hollywood dream v reality – and have fun with it, amid a wealth of clips and the odd deliciously gnomic utterance from the shock-headed genius himself.
Wednesday, 11.35pm, Film4
***
The Portable Door
The first book in Tom Holt’s JW Wells & Co series of fantasy novels hits the screen in Jeffrey Walker’s spiffing comedy. It’s all a bit Harry Potter and the Half-Witted Intern, as Patrick Gibson’s eager but seemingly unqualified trainee joins a firm of “paranatural engineers”. They use magic to change people’s actions – such as a meet-cute or a family reunion – but owner Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz) has bigger plans. With a scene-stealing Sam Neill as Wells’s colleague and plenty of Pratchett-like oddity, it’s a fun addition to the venerable legacy of British weird fiction.
Friday, 2.30pm, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
You could go the obvious route on Good Friday and watch King of Kings (10am, BBC Two) with Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus. Or you could get your Easter fix with a cute little alien in Steven Spielberg’s family sci-fi thriller-cum-Christ allegory. After being sent down to Earth, ET suffers the little children, brings things back to life, dies and is resurrected, then ascends to the heavens (and his human friend Elliott’s mother is called Mary). Spielberg’s childlike sense of wonder and suspicion of the adult world pervade a film of many miraculous moments.
Good Friday, 5.45pm, ITV2
