From Possible Love to Ali G: Who Iz I?: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

In Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s involving, edgy drama, documentary-maker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) is attempting to make a film about factory workers sacked after a strike was violently broken by the state. She is particularly intrigued by the sullen, possibly traumatised Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu). He is resistant but Ye-ji develops a bond with his enthusiastic wife, Jeon Do-yeon’s Mi-ok. As the parties get to know each other, with the addition of Ye-ji’s wealthy spouse Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), uncomfortable questions of class and exploitation swirl around them. Just as in his last film, 2018’s Burning, Chang-dong has a sharp eye for what’s hidden behind everyday lives.
Friday 6 November, Netflix

Ali G: Who Iz I?

Hot-footing it from cinemas, Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical documentary dusts off his deluded 90s Staines wideboy rapper for a series of pranks taking aim, mostly, at American Maga and anti-woke folk and their zeal to protect the border from immigrants. Morgana Robinson co-stars as the very pregnant “me Julie”, with Ali G heading to the US on the promise of a new show to fund impending fatherhood. Your enjoyment of all this will depend on your taste for gross-out gags and political provocation, and a character whose time has arguably passed.
Out now, Prime Video

Boorman and the Devil

If you’ve ever read one of his books, you’ll know the great British film-maker John Boorman (Point Blank, Deliverance) is a wonderful raconteur. And in David Kittredge’s deep-dive documentary, he’s great value as he recalls his time directing Exorcist II: The Heretic, a disastrous, glorious mess of a horror sequel that almost killed his career – and him. Stars Linda Blair and Louise Fletcher add further context to a cautionary tale that includes a drunken Richard Burton, locust wrangling and Boorman falling prey to a sand-based fever. SW
Saturday 31 October, 8pm, Sky Documentaries

The Fog

Much of the plot of John Carpenter’s classic 1980 horror yarn will be familiar to viewers of recent Apple TV homage Widow’s Bay. A California coastal community is assailed by ghostly forces from the sea hidden in a mysterious fog – the result of a 19th-century curse – and nobody is safe; not Adrienne Barbeau’s local radio DJ Stevie, nor hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis) nor fisher Nick (Tom Atkins). Carpenter’s mastery of low-budget film-making is evident here: he does so much with a bit of dry ice, a few backlit figures and his own ominous electronic score.
Saturday 31 October, 9pm, Sky Arts

Fanny and Alexander

Ingmar Bergman delved fruitfully into his own childhood for this resonant three-hour period drama (cut down from the even better five-hour TV original). The titular children are part of a large, well-off Swedish family who own a theatre in their town. Their emotional, magical life is brilliantly evoked in sumptuous Christmas celebrations, but the kids’ joy is short-lived when their mother is widowed, then marries a cold, cruel bishop who prioritises “purity and austerity”. An intoxicating masterpiece.
Saturday 31 October, 9.20pm, BBC Four

Talk to Me

Prior to their teeth-clenchingly brilliant Bring Her Back last year, Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou had already explored the grisly scope of grief in this nail-biting 2022 horror. A group of teenagers are introduced to a party game that involves holding a severed hand – which may have been a medium’s – and summoning a dead person, which you invite to (briefly) possess you. But when Mia (Sophie Wilde), who lost her mother a year ago, agrees to let her best friend’s kid brother Riley (Joe Bird) try it out, things go bloodily wrong. Great, ghostly goings-on from an up-and-coming duo.
Saturday 31 October, 10pm, Film4

The Nature of Love

Opposites may attract but, Monia Chokri’s romantic drama asks, can love overcome the differences in the long term? Canadian philosophy lecturer Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) falls in lust at first sight with lumberjack-shirted builder Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), to the extent of breaking up her marriage. As she socialises with his working-class family and he attends a dinner party with her intellectual friends, there’s plenty of fish-out-of-water comedy to be had, but Chokri is careful not to condescend or satirise either side of the social divide.
Tuesday 3 November, 11.35pm, Film4