HD Highlights: September 14

Sky Movies Greats: Unforgiven (Sky 22, 8.30, 5.1) Clint Eastwood’s multi-Oscar-winning western shoots accepted conventions full of holes and takes no prisoners when it comes to telling the truth. Rarely has a western redressed the inaccuracies and exaggerations of fiction and film with such steadfast and sometimes amusing authenticity. Yet underlying Unforgiven’s stark revisionism is the genre’s most familiar refrain: a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Eastwood, who also directed, plays a renowned gunfighter-turned-sodbuster who buckles on his gunbelt again when local whores post a $1000 for two cowboys who disfigured one of the sisterhood. What happens next is an unforgettable depiction of how the West just might have been, and how thin the line between good and evil always has been. Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris co-star. (1990) ✭✭✭✭✭

SoHo Cinema: Longford (Sky 10, 8.30, 5.1) Jim Broadbent stars in the true story of British prison reformer, Lord Longford, and his controversial headline-making friendship with one of Britain’s most notorious criminals, child murderess Myra Hindley (Samantha Morton). “The Hindley case shook his confidence and strained his faith, but in the long run it deepened his convictions,” the New York Times observed. “Longford pays tribute to his boldness and sincerity without airbrushing out the blind spots.” (2007) ✭✭✭✭

❑ The Graham Norton Show (TV3, 8.30, R) With Jude Law, Robert Downey Jr, Eddie Izzard and Rebecca Ferguson, who performs “Nothing’s Real But Love”. ✭✭✭✭

❑ Supernatural (TV2, 10.40, 5.1) Dean meets an intriguing woman at a bar while investigating attacks where the victims were branded with a strange symbol after their hands and feet were cut off. ✭✭✭