Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar for his uproarious performance as a swivel-eyed news anchor – a cross between Billy Graham and Donald Trump

‘The time has come to say … is ‘dehumanisation’ such a bad word?” The speaker is Howard Beale, the sweat-drenched, swivel-eyed TV news anchor in this classic 1976 satire from screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky and director Sidney Lumet, now on rerelease. Depressed by the loss of his wife and by getting fired due to dwindling audiences, Beale proclaims he will kill himself live on air and is then re-hired as a colossal popular and then populist success, his celebrity delirium turning him into a crazy prophet, telling millions of Americans to scream out of the window that they are as mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Beale is a mixture of Billy Graham, radio star Orson Welles telling America the Martians are coming, and that notorious ratings-obsessive Donald Trump.

Network finds its place in the distinctive Hollywood tradition of showing TV as meretricious, mindless and corrupt … as opposed, presumably, to movies. It’s a classic 70s mainstreamer, a terrifically well-made, well-written talking point to put alongside other richly enjoyable small-screen dramas such as Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George from 1968, James L Brooks’s Broadcast News in 1987, Robert Redford’s Quiz Show from 1994 – and Antonio Campos’s Christine, about Christine Chubbuck, the American TV news reporter who in 1974 really did kill herself live on the air. Chayevsky denied she was the inspiration for this film. Peter Finch gives an uproarious performance as Beale, for which he posthumously won the best actor Oscar after succumbing to a fatal heart attack in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel – a fate hardly less satirical or poignant than Beale’s own.

The Mercury Prize winner reflects on Glastonbury festivals past. Plus: Hilary Swank’s Eileen is off to the country fair on Alaska Daily. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, BBC Two
Glastonbury 2024 headliners Dua Lipa and Coldplay have already been profiled in this pre-festival hype strand. Now the spotlight falls on Little Simz, the 2022 Mercury prizewinner poised to make her Pyramid stage debut on Saturday night. It has been a fascinating journey for the rapper and Top Boy star, who first played Glasto in 2016. Here, she reflects on her previous experiences in deepest Somerset and shouts out some of her favourite festival sets. Graeme Virtue

The Desperate Housewives star’s Spain-set series is the TV equivalent of comfort food. It’s full of romance, warmth and gorgeous countryside – even if it won’t set the world alight

It’s fish out of water time! It’s also feelgood, low-stakes, lusciously shot drama time, so pull up a comfy chair, pour yourself a drink and enjoy, with the 75% of your attention it was designed for, the Apple TV+ dramedy Land of Women.

This is the new vehicle for Eva Longoria, still best known for her role as Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives more than a decade ago (though true fans may cite her four episodes as Jake Peralta’s girlfriend in Brooklyn Nine-Nine as her finest work). Here she plays Gala, an affluent and happily married New Yorker of Spanish extraction and mother of one who is countering empty nest syndrome as her daughter begins university by opening a wine shop. Yes, a … wine shop. It was clearly the first thing that came to the writers’ minds to signify happiness, wealth, New Yorkery and go-gettery. Don’t dwell on it. They clearly didn’t.

This documentary’s plunge into the fight to regain editorial independence for Oklahoma’s Muscogee Nation is a murky, twisty tale

It can take decades to win a free press, but only a moment to lose it. Bad Press, a woolly but instructive documentary in the Storyville strand, begins by showing us one such moment. A group of casually dressed people are hunched round a long table in a room cluttered with filing cabinets and spare chairs. This is the legislative council of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, sitting in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. After a brief debate, the motion in front of them is carried by seven votes to six. With that, the Nation’s government‑funded newspaper and radio station lose editorial independence.

This is 2018. Three years earlier, the Muscogee Nation had enshrined the freedom of its press in law. Native American tribes are not bound by the US constitution – which includes that protection – because they govern themselves independently. Almost none of them have chosen to legislate to protect a free press; the Muscogee was one of only five of the 574 federally recognised tribes to have done so.

From inter-dimensional battles at Piccadilly Circus to a grime and drill soundtrack, the team behind Rapman’s epic sci-fi series Supacell talk about a fantasy saga like nothing before

This is a superhero origin story. That is, the story of Andrew “Rapman” Onwubolu’s triumphant round-trip from south London to Hollywood and back again. Supacell, Rapman’s epic sci-fi fantasy series, which lands on Netflix this week is something subtly different: “I call it a superpower story,” says Rapman – “Raps” to his friends – with a relaxed grin. “Everyone is out for themselves. They’re very much flawed, ordinary individuals. No one’s got capes on. No one’s trying to save the world.”

Like Rapman’s 2019 box office breakthrough, Blue Story – Lewisham’s answer to West Side Story – or the irresistibly soapy tale of badman betrayal that is 2018 YouTube series Shiro’s Story, Supacell has a Black-majority cast and a south-east London setting. Unlike those previous hits, this series forgoes the film-maker’s trademark rap narration and features characters who can do things like teleport. Or turn invisible. Or move objects with their minds. Even so, realism of a kind was important: “If me or you get powers, would the first thing we’d do be to stop a bridge falling in China? Probably not. We’re probably going to figure out how to use this to advance ourselves and our families.”

Cringe-inducing writing, completely unlikable characters and a plot that’s an absolute slog – the Game of Thrones prequel puts the ‘drag’ in ‘dragons’

When House of the Dragon arrived in 2022, it promised the sort of epic television we’d been missing since Game of Thrones, which it is a prequel to. Targaryens! Dragons! Matt Smith in an ice-blond wig! Event TV was about to make its fiery return. Nearly 10 million people tuned in to watch the first episode in the US, making it the most-watched HBO series premiere ever. But it barely managed to cough up a smoke ring, let alone set the small screen ablaze.

We were stuck between a rock (Dragonstone) and a hard place (King’s Landing) for most of the series. Scenes were so dimly lit it left you needing to book an eye test. And the franchise quickly lost its steamy reputation. In short: it was extremely dull, no match for its juggernaut sister.

Heart-lifting adaptation of Doyle’s children’s novel follows cheeky 12-year-old Mia as she faces the loss of her beloved granny

Roddy Doyle’s novel for kids, about childhood grief, has been turned into a gorgeous family animation with a big heart, charming without being too sugary. It’s a gentle introduction to death with its non-religious message that in the end, when someone dear to us dies, what we are left with is their love, and what they have shown us about how to love.

A cheeky, flame-haired 12-year-old Dublin girl called Mary, voiced by Mia O’Connor, wants to be a famous chef when she grows up. The movie opens with Mary competing for the summer camp at an elite catering school. When the snooty judges criticise her tarte tartin, Mary’s grandmother Emer (Rosaleen Linehan) lets rips at “the eejits with the clipboards”. Back at home, granny Emer falls ill and is rushed to hospital. The news is not good and, what with her granny being sick, plus hormones, Mary is raging. There’s real warmth in the scenes at home: her exhausted, worried mum Scarlett (Sharon Horgan) doesn’t cook (“this spag bol is about as Italian as Bono”), dad is cheerful taxi driver Paddy (Brendan Gleeson), and there’s two galumphing brothers; everyone drinks endless cups of tea.

The now famous Channel 4 lesbian kiss became a symbol of LGBTQ+ progress that resonates to this day

As my Brookside co-star Anna Friel and I prepared to film our on-screen kiss 30 years ago, I could never have anticipated the cultural significance this simple act would have.

It was 1994, when section 28 was in full force, prohibiting the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools, when Channel 4 aired the now famous lesbian kiss between my character, Margaret Clemence, and Friel’s, Beth Jordache, on the popular soap opera; the first time a kiss between two women had aired pre-watershed. It would for ever change the British media landscape and society’s perception of LGBTQ+ relationships.

Nicola Stephenson is a TV, film and theatre actor