Enola Holmes 3 to Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story – the seven best films to watch on TV this week

Makers of mega-hit Adolescence Jack Thorne and Philip Barantini reunite for the next round of the sisterly Sherlock spin-off. Plus, Sarah Jessica Parker’s juicy look at the life of a legendary New York sex show host

Pick of the week
Enola Holmes 3

The Victorian-era teen mystery reunites ingenious screenwriter Jack Thorne with his Watson; director Philip Barantini. Barantini may be new to Enola Holmes but he’s not to Thorne, the two having collaborated on Netflix mega-hit Adolescence. That bodes well for this third movie, which sees the nepo-detective (Millie Bobby Brown) distracted from her destination wedding to the dreamy-but-drippy Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) by an unforeseen calamity. Dr Watson (Himesh Patel) arrives in Malta to tell Enola her brother, the famed sleuth Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill), has been kidnapped – and she is the only one Mother Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter) trusts to come to his rescue.
Wednesday 1 July, Netflix

***

A Foreign Affair

The great Hollywood director Billy Wilder famously stretched love-is-blind tolerance to absurdity with the “Nobody’s perfect!” closing line of 1959 classic Some Like It Hot. But there’s overlooking a few foibles in the name of true love, and then there’s an American GI taking up with a Nazi cabaret singer (Marlene Dietrich) in postwar Berlin. That’s how Captain Pringle (John Lund) carries on in this satirical screwball comedy from the early cold war period. And all the while, an adorable Iowa congresswoman (Jean Arthur) looks on in heartbroken dismay.
Monday 29 June, 12.55pm, Film4

***

The First Wives Club

If Destiny’s Child were middle-aged white women, they’d be Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton putting the world to rights in this 1996 comedy. The three star as old college pals who reunite at the funeral of their fourth (Stockard Channing), who’s been driven to death by an evil ex-husband. Recognising similarities with their own situations, this trio of divorcees seek righteous revenge, culminating in a song-and-dance number set to Lesley Gore’s female empowerment classic, You Don’t Own Me.
Tuesday 30 June, 11.15pm, Sky Cinema Greats

***

A Cock and Bull Story

This is a madcap, sort-of adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 18th-century work of metafiction, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (in at number 19 on the Guardian’s 100 Best Novels of All Time list), in which a British film crew try to adapt the book for the screen. But it’s also the first time Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan co-starred as heightened versions of themselves, under the direction of Michael Winterbottom. That means we have this film to thank for four glorious series of The Trip. What a legacy.
Wednesday 30 June, 9pm, BBC Three

***

The Last Tree

You can’t call yourself a connoisseur of British cinema if you haven’t seen this hypnotic coming-of-age tale. Sam Adewunmi is Femi, a British Nigerian who moves from Lincolnshire to London to Lagos in search of a more stable sense of self, while comedian Gbemisola Ikumelo is startlingly good as Femi’s birth mother. The visuals betray the influence of Terrence Malick, but the tender emotional insights are all writer-director Shola Amoo’s own, establishing him as a major talent.
Wednesday 30 June, 1.25am, Film4

***

Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story

The story of Robin Byrd is a true New York story about sex and the city, so it’s fitting that Carrie Bradshaw AKA Sarah Jessica Parker would be on board as producer on this callback to a more open-minded era. Byrd began broadcasting her weekly sex show on public access television in 1977, and soon became not only a local celebrity (Cheri Oteri played her on SNL) but an LGBTQ+ activist. That meant fighting decades-long legal battles with Time Warner Cable, now Warner Bros Discovery, ie the parent company of HBO Max, this documentary’s broadcaster. Only in New York!
Wednesday 1 July, HBO Max

***

Nosferatu the Vampyre

It may have been overshadowed by Robert Eggers’ film of 2024, but this 1979 homage to FW Murnau’s 1922 silent masterpiece remains among the most haunting vampire movies of all time. Herzog’s frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski plays the undead count with unusual pathos, while French actor Isabelle Adjani is well cast as the blood-sucker’s victim, caught between her immediate disgust and her growing desire. It’s the imagery, though, which lingers, including 11,000 live rats and the mummified corpses from an 1833 cholera epidemic.
Friday 12.40am, Talking Pictures TV