Richard Lutz checks out the runners and riders this week on the box.
Sports documentaries? No thanks, all gratuitous interviews with people rolled out to justify the cost of the film. Nope.
Except for the Muhammad Ali classic When We Were Kings (Tues, ITV4, 1.40am). Here is a film worth sitting down for- or more realistically recording.
Director Leon Gast filmed the famous 1974 Rumble in the Jungle when Ali grabbed back his crown from the lumbering George Foreman in the night heat of Zaire.
Cast includes, not only likeable rascal Ali and the even more likeable Foreman, but James Brown, BB King, Spike Lee and Norman Mailer.
Ali is a pleasure to watch- a man born for the tv screen. And director Gast (who was behind the camera for other documentaries on The Grateful Dead, Celia Cruz and the evolution of Salsa music) is a master of just letting the camera sit and track what is happening in the crazed run up to that Zaire night.
Moving on and when you brush aside the detritus of lesser John Wayne no-hopers and mid afternoon Norman Wisdom garbage, there is the classic old fashioned Gunfight at the OK Corral (Tue, Ch4, 12.50). Kirk and Burt get stuck in with the shootin’ irons and John Sturges directs. Too bad a new history has found that the fight never took place at the corral but on waste ground nearby. Ah, well…all stories are true.
If you want proof that the British film industry can make rubbish even worse that a Norman Wisdom funfest, then Kevin and Perry Go Large (Wed, CBBC3, 1.30am) is for you. How Kathy Burke and Loadsa Money Harry Enfield got chained to this dead horse is anyone’s guess (money perhaps)
From Perry et al to that artsy Brit stuff that is good: A Room With a View is the afternoon movie of the week (Thur, Ch4, 12.55). Helena Bonham Carter has the Pre Raphaelite look down pat and James Ivory makes everything look beautiful. It still glows after 27 years.
And the next day… another Brit classic: Withnail and I (Sat, Ch4, 12.,45am) with Richard E Grant and a wide eyed Paul McGann. They re two out of work actors addled by drink and drugs who leave London for a picaresque holiday to the Lakes graced with a brilliantly funny script.