A sequel to the celebrated 1959 satire The Mouse that Roared, Richard Lester’s zany comedy lacks its predecessor’s major selling point of having Peter Sellers in multiple roles. Instead, Bernard Cribbins, Terry-Thomas and Margaret Rutherford star as inhabitants of the small European duchy that becomes an unlikely pawn in the superpower space race by launching its own Moon mission. A gentle afternoon treat, The Mouse on the Moon was only Lester’s second film. A year later he found much wider fame with the Beatles vehicle A Hard Day’s Night. (82 min)

ABOUT A BOY (2002)
ITV1, 9pm

Nick Hornby’s novel about a London bachelor looking for love by pretending to be a single father retains a surprisingly bittersweet tone from the American Pie writer-directors Paul and Chris Weitz. The duo’s Oscar-nominated adaptation is crisply written and frequently hilarious, with Hugh Grant on unusually unsympathetic form as the spoilt anti-hero, Will. Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette co-star, while the screen newcomer Nicholas Hoult acquits himself well as the boy who changes Will’s cold-hearted ways. Only the sugary Hollywood ending strikes a jarring note. (101 min)

BLOW DRY (2001)
BBC One, 11.30pm; Wales, 12.10am

A strong cast led by Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman and Rachel Griffiths is the main reason to watch Paddy Breathnach’s flawed but amiable comic drama. Nighy and Rickman play former partners in a Yorkshire barbershop who are drawn into a showdown in a small-town hairdressing contest while their friends, lovers and children supply the tragicomic subplots. Throwing terminal illness and infidelity into the uneven mix, Blow Dry is based on a screenplay by The Full Monty writer Simon Beaufoy. Hollywood hunk Josh Hartnett is bizarrely miscast as Rickman’s English son. (91 min)

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