Being Heumann to Avedon: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

Judith Heumann may not be a household name in the UK, but in the US she has been called the “mother of the disability rights movement”. In Sian Heder’s energising fact-based drama, she’s portrayed (brilliantly) by our own Ruth Madeley as a complex woman – inspiring but dominating, passionate yet at times difficult to deal with. The film focuses on her leadership of a coalition of the rejected – wheelchair users, blind and deaf activists – who occupied a federal building in San Francisco in 1977 to protest the failure to sign regulations that would ban state discrimination against disabled people. A rousing tale that’s careful to show that the fight for equality is still far from a done deal.
Friday 13 November, Apple TV

The Bride Wore Black

With its femme fatale, revenge plot and Bernard Herrmann score, François Truffaut’s 1968 thriller is clearly a homage to the French director’s hero, Alfred Hitchcock. But being a prime mover in the radical Nouvelle Vague movement, Truffaut skews the generic plot with off-kilter comedy, boldly undramatic killings and arch social commentary. And in Jeanne Moreau’s widow Julie – who targets the chauvinistic men who killed her husband on their wedding day – we have a cool, calculating heroine who only rarely reveals the trauma behind her actions.
Saturday 7 November, 9.10pm, BBC Four

Some Like It Hot

Nobody’s perfect, but Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy is pretty darn close. After jazz musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) witness a gun battle – inspired by the St Valentine’s Day massacre – they are forced on the run. The pair end up posing as women to join a touring all-female band that boasts Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane as its singer. It’s a gender-bending delight, as Joe pursues Sugar – his Cary Grant impersonation almost, but not quite, stealing the show from the pitch-perfect Monroe – while Jerry is wooed by a persistent millionaire.
Sunday 8 November, 8pm, Sky Arts

The Kitchen

The authentically grimy feature debut of Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares is set in a near-future London but it could just as well be the present day, as the mainly Black residents of a run-down but community-minded estate defy violent attempts at eviction. The solitary Izi (Kane Robinson) lives there but he is intent on getting out. That is until, at the funeral home where he works, he meets Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) who may be his son. But a more welcoming rival father figure soon emerges in Robin Hood-style vigilante leader Staples (Hope Ikpoku Jr).
Sunday 8 November, 11.30pm, Channel

Avedon

“He changed everything.” Such high praise is common in Ron Howard’s scintillating profile of photographer Richard Avedon, but based on the stunning images shown here they are fully justified. His career ranged from shooting IDs for merchant marines to bringing movement and theatricality to the staid fashion spreads of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, but this childhood friend of James Baldwin was also deeply political, with series on the Vietnam war and mental health institutions making waves.
Wednesday 11 November, Netflix

ISS

Better known for investigative documentaries Blackfish and The Grab, Gabriela Cowperthwaite goes into orbit with this speculative sci-fi thriller set on the International Space Station. Scientist Kira (the always convincing Ariana DeBose) has just arrived to join the six-person crew – half American, half Russian – when nuclear war breaks out (glimpsed ominously through the portholes). Both sides receive orders to take control, but the futility of their efforts is clear as Earth burns beneath them. Co-starring Chris Messina and Pilou Asbæk, it’s a tense drama with a sharp edge of despair.
Wednesday 11 November, 9pm, Film4

Modesty Blaise

It can be hard to spoof James Bond (see the Peter Sellers Casino Royale) and Joseph Losey’s 1966 spy caper is slightly too in love with the globetrotting and gadgetry that epitomise 007 to be truly satirical. But with arthouse darling Monica Vitti swanning around in a series of outlandish costumes as thief and/or secret agent Modesty, assisted by Terence Stamp’s suave cockney, it rarely matters. Dirk Bogarde, who would have been an exceptional Bond villain, is a louche foe in a proto-Barbarella riot of colour and chaos.
Wednesday 11 November, 9.10pm, Talking Pictures TV