Pick of the week
Becoming Led Zeppelin
The archetypal origin story for a band is a bunch of schoolmates who pick up instruments and stumble on a hit sound. But, as Bernard MacMahon’s terrific, archive-stuffed documentary reveals, Led Zeppelin had a more roundabout gestation. Guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones were in-demand session players in 60s London, while singer Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham were jobbing musicians in Birmingham. It wasn’t until Page joined the Yardbirds that he realised his dream of a no-singles group with a heavy, improvisational edge. Featuring interviews with the surviving members, rare audio of Bonham and big chunks of gig footage, it’s a fascinating slice of rock history.
Saturday 9 August, Sky Documentaries, on demand
The Pickup
Russell (Eddie Murphy) is an armoured truck guard edging towards retirement who is paired with irritating newbie Travis (Pete Davidson) on a long day of deliveries. However, their van is targeted by criminals led by Keke Palmer’s Zoe, forcing a change of plans for all involved. Oddly, Tim Story’s chase caper turned heist thriller makes Murphy the straight man to Davidson’s goofball, at the expense of the star’s comic abilities. But the confident, charismatic Palmer takes up some of the slack, and the highway action sequences are smartly done.
Out now, Prime Video
Back to the Future Part III
Shot back to back with Part II, the final part of the sci-fi trilogy is a much better film, largely due to the fun everyone seems to be having with the western setting. Dusting off the DeLorean, Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) flies back to 1885 to save Christopher Lloyd’s stranded Doc Brown from being shot dead by Buford Tannen, Biff’s ancestor. Playful tweaks to the genre and a romance for Doc with Mary Steenburgen’s teacher are the new elements in an otherwise familiar plot of cobbled-together gadgetry, space-time dilemmas and jolly slapstick comedy.
Saturday 9 August, 3.35pm, BBC One
Margrete: Queen of the North
Charlotte Sieling’s 2021 historical drama takes a footnote from the life of a 14th-century Danish royal and gives it a dusting of Game of Thrones-style clan politics, generational scheming and nation building. The estimable Trine Dyrholm is magnetic as Margrete, who – despite being a woman in a man’s world – has unified Norway, Sweden and Denmark and presides over a time of peace. Then a man appears claiming to be her long-dead son, which puts her adopted heir Erik (Morten Hee Andersen) in a funk and threatens to destabilise her hard-won pact.
Saturday 9 August, 1.05am, BBC Two
Jimmy’s Hall
Eight years after his 2006 film The Wind That Shakes the Barley delved into the 1920s Irish war of independence and civil war, Ken Loach returned to the country to assess its uneasy peace circa 1932. In an absorbing, fact-based story, communist Jimmy (Barry Ward) returns from the US to his County Leitrim home to reopen a community hall, which exposes the continuing rift between the working class and “the masters and the pastors” who dictate their lives and block democratic change.
Sunday 10 August, 1.10am, Film4
Grand Hotel
“I want to be alone!” Greta Garbo is at her most diva-ish in this 1932 Oscar winner, a seductive pre-Code melodrama set exclusively in an opulent Berlin hotel. She is a depressed ballerina given a new lease of life after falling for John Barrymore’s Baron Felix von Geigern. Sadly, he has plans to steal her jewels to pay off his debts – but he’s also in love with her so it’s not a simple proposition. Lionel Barrymore’s terminally ill bookkeeper, a young Joan Crawford as a flirtatious stenographer and Wallace Beery’s bumptious factory owner are other guests adding to the social whirl.
Thursday 14 August, 7pm, BBC Four
Roxanne
This 1987 romantic comedy is Steve Martin in his cinematic pomp, melding physical humour and dramatic purpose to beguiling effect. His own adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac transposes the action to a small US town, where fire chief CD (Martin) has a very, very long nose but is a whip-smart, outgoing local personality. Daryl Hannah plays the titular love interest, an astronomy student who admires the looks of Rick Rossovich’s nice-but-dim firefighter Chris but really likes the eloquent words CD puts into his courting colleague’s mouth.
Friday 15 August, 6pm, Sky Cinema Greats
