Loads here for a cosy night in...
One Night in Millstreet
10:15pm, RTÉ One
This winner of a documentary mixes canvas, chutzpah, and comedy as it takes you back to the Ireland of 1995 - yesterday and a lifetime ago - where Dublin boxer Steve Collins makes his bid to take the crown of reigning WBO Super-Middleweight Champion Chris Eubank. With Collins and Eubank superb interviewees in the present day, One Night in Millstreet is edge-of-the-seat stuff all over again. It also makes for a terrific time capsule of the 4x3, social-media-free Ireland that was once home. The film is 10 minutes too short - we needed more of an epilogue - but that's the only points deduction here. A place among the top-ranked sports movies is thoroughly deserved; the greatest victory, however, is that Collins and Eubank still have their health.
Hill Street Blues
Channel 4 Player
The best TV series you've never binged? Thirty-eight years on from its final episode, Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll's Hill Street Blues puts forward quite the case. Simply put, this police procedural changed the course of TV drama forever. Hill Street Blues won 26 Emmys over its seven-season run and was nominated for 98. Need more persuading? It won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series four years in a row (1981-1984). Daniel J Travanti heads a superb cast as Captain Frank Furillo, the True North for the officers of Hill Street Precinct, and you'll find yourself all-in as the lives of Frank and his colleagues unfold season by season. So many great performances in so many great episodes - and they're all available on the Channel 4 Player.
The Surfer
Sky Cinema
Irish director Lorcan Finnegan and Oscar winner Nicolas Cage prove to be a formidable team in this ego-under-the-Sun psychodrama, a movie that ranks with Cage's best work of recent years. In The Surfer, Cage's Man with No Name returns to the beautiful Australian beach of his early years, all set to buy his childhood home overlooking the bay. And then everything falls apart as he roasts alive in a car park. In Irish writer Thomas Martin's screenplay, there are elements of both the Western genre and the unleash-the-fury dynamics of a vigilante movie, but The Surfer also manages to skewer machismo, guru notions, property porn, and the arrival fallacy that sees so many of us struggling to keep our heads above water. "It's all building to this breaking point," Cage says prophetically...
Blindboy: The Land of Slaves & Scholars
RTÉ Player
This week, presenter and podcaster Blindboy Boatclub was named Best Documentary Presenter at the Grierson Awards in London for this RTÉ One programme offering "a fresh perspective on the legacy of early Irish Christianity". Honouring Blindboy: The Land of Slaves & Scholars, the Grierson Awards said: "Jurors applauded this documentary for bringing a fresh, personal, and deeply thought-provoking perspective to the screen. With honesty, poetic insight, and a uniquely engaging voice, this presenter drew audiences into subjects they might not normally explore, challenging perceptions and sparking genuine reflection. Their authenticity and originality make their work both distinctive and profoundly impactful." So, perfect timing to catch up on the RTÉ Player...
Don't Breathe
Netflix
If it's the stuff of nightmares you want, director Fede Álvarez's 2016 rager will give you your money's worth. And then some. Against the wasteland backdrop of Detroit, three teenage thieves (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto) decide to rob a blind Iraq War veteran (Stephen Lang) who, they reckon, is sitting on a fortune. That's the set-up, but to reveal any more plot-wise would spoil your immersion in a movie that has nods to the masters but still manages to deliver real terror from the tropes and has a few tricks up its sleeve too. Even the horror hardcore faithful may discover that Don't Breathe pushes their buttons in ways they didn't expect. There is a gripe about the end, but it's the only letdown in an otherwise brilliant addition to the genre. It's always good to check that you have a few spare bulbs at home...
