{"id":805870,"date":"2026-07-17T10:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/805870\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:11:11","slug":"the-dink-to-wicked-little-letters-the-seven-best-films-to-watch-on-tv-this-week-television-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/805870\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dink to Wicked Little Letters: the seven best films to watch on TV this week | Television & radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pick of the week
The Dink<\/p>\n

There is plenty of comic potential to be found in has-been sports pros still living off former glories. In Josh Greenbaum\u2019s amiable comedy, that figure is Dusty \u201cthe Hammer\u201d Boyd (New Girl<\/a>\u2019s Jake Johnson), a tennis prodigy who failed to make the grade and is now reduced to coaching nine-year-olds at his father\u2019s country club. Dad Chuck (a wonderfully dismissive Ed Harris) is fighting a rearguard action against tennis\u2019s increasingly popular offshoot pickleball \u2013 \u201cthe coronavirus of sport\u201d \u2013 and\u00a0his son is desperate to please him. But when Dusty checks out the new game, he meets sparky older woman Candace (Mary Steenburgen, delightful) and his\u00a0priorities change.
Friday 24 July, Apple TV<\/p>\n

Wicked Little LettersHilarious \u2026 Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman in Wicked Little Letters. Photograph: Parisa Taghizadeh<\/p>\n

When anonymous poison pen letters are sent to prim coastal town resident Edith (Olivia Colman<\/a>), suspicion falls on her neighbour Rose (Jessie Buckley<\/a>), an Irish single mother with a boisterous, proto-feminist attitude. There is something inherently hilarious about Colman swearing, and Thea Sharrock\u2019s 1920s-set comedy<\/a> ladles on the insults as the writer\u2019s vitriol widens to the whole community. Behind the curtain-twitching scandal is a cautionary tale about bullying and repression, but watching Colman and Buckley go at it is almost enough in itself.
Saturday 18 July, 9pm, Channel 4<\/p>\n

Jurassic ParkFun family sci-fi \u2026 Sam Neill as Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Photograph: Universal\/Allstar<\/p>\n

The recent death of Sam Neill<\/a> is a massive loss to cinema, but he was so prolific that there will always be a good-to-great film of his around to keep his memory alive. The first posthumous one to appear is his best known \u2013 Steven Spielberg\u2019s fun family sci-fi adventure<\/a>. Neill plays a palaeontologist invited by Richard Attenborough\u2019s industrialist to his island to study dinosaurs he has revived through DNA trickery. What could possibly go wrong? Finely balanced between wonder and jeopardy, it\u2019s the supreme crowd-pleaser.
Saturday 18 July, 10.50pm, ITV1<\/p>\n

The Pillow BookSex and calligraphy \u2026 Vivian Wu as Nagiko and Ewan McGregor as Jerome in The Pillow Book. Photograph: Album\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Peter Greenaway<\/a> found perfect source material for his perennial obsessions with art, sex and death (with a side order of lists) in the titular notebook penned by Sei Sh\u014dnagon, a lady in the imperial court of late-900s Japan. In this exquisitely stylish 1996 drama, Sei\u2019s present-day counterpart is model Nagiko (Vivian Wu), who gets sexual gratification from calligraphers writing on her body. Then she starts a torrid affair with British translator Jerome (Ewan McGregor<\/a>) and finds a very literary way to take revenge on the publisher who destroyed her father.
Tuesday 21 July, 1.10am, Film4<\/p>\n

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The Second ActCheeky rug-pulling \u2026 Lea Seydoux and Rapha\u00ebl Quenard in The Second Act. Photograph: Chi-Fou-Mi\/Arte France Cinema<\/p>\n

This surreal provocation<\/a> from Quentin Dupieux could be about the self-importance of actors or the dangers posed to human creativity by AI \u2013 but it might simply be a cheeky exercise in dramatic rug-pulling. A group of performers (including L\u00e9a Seydoux and Vincent Lindon) play scenes \u2013 for an AI director \u2013 that almost immediately fall apart as they go off-script, get into arguments, fight, even quit. A meta comedy where you\u2019re never quite sure which film-within-a-film you\u2019re watching.
Wednesday 22 July, 12.45am, Film4<\/p>\n

PreschoolPlayground tactics \u2026 Michael Socha in Preschool. Photograph: Peter Cziborra\/Paramount<\/p>\n

Michael Socha<\/a> is becoming a very accomplished comic actor, and his trademark deadpan desperation is well used in Josh Duhamel\u2019s amusing caper about stupidly competitive dads. Brian (Socha) and Alan (Duhamel) just want the best for their children \u2013 but when there is only one place up for grabs at an exclusive private preschool, they will do anything to beat the other man. Antonia Thomas and Charity Wakefield play their more sensible other halves, reduced to spectators in a game of class-tinged male oneupmanship involving indoor skydiving, judo, padel violence and more.
Friday 24 July, Paramount+<\/p>\n

Janet PlanetChild\u2019s eye \u2026 Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler in Janet Planet. Photograph: Courtesy of A24<\/p>\n

Friendless 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) has just demanded to come back from summer camp early. So for the rest of the holidays her world revolves round her acupuncturist single mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson). Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker\u2019s languid drama<\/a> offers a child\u2019s-eye view of adult relationships, with Lacy party to situations involving her mum she only partly comprehends or cares about \u2013 from Janet\u2019s troubles with boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton) to the visit of Sophie Okonedo\u2019s sort-of-cult escapee Regina.
Friday 24 July, 11.05pm, BBC Two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pick of the weekThe Dink There is plenty of comic potential to be found in has-been sports pros…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-805870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}