This was only Ken Loach's second cinema feature but it still ranks as one of his finest and most moving films. Billy, a disaffected young lad living on a soulless Barnsley estate, finds a fledgling kestrel and, for the first time in his life, feels his imagination gripped. With infinite patience-and a book on falconry nicked from a local bookstore-he starts to train the bird. There's no boy-and-his-pet sentimentality here: the relationship between Kes the bird and the puny, taciturn Billy is the kinship, full of wary respect, between two wild creatures, and when Kes for the first time flies free and returns to Billy's wrist, the sense of exhilaration is overwhelming. Although Loach never rams his message home, it's clear that Billy stands for a whole generation of youngsters whose potential, barring some such chance event, will never be even fractionally realised. Chris Menges' photography brings out all the austere beauty of the Yorkshire locations, and Loach draws believable performances from his largely non-professional cast-especially the 14-year-old David Bradley, stunningly convincing as Billy. And anyone who has ever suffered under a bullying, self-satisfied sports teacher will squirm with recognition at the brilliant cameo from the late Brian Glover. -Philip Kemp.

Goodbye Charlie Bright, Nick Love's 2001 rites of passage drama about a teenage group of petty criminals in a steaming South London summer, was never going to be a massive box-office hit. But it might prove to be a rather significant piece in the long run. If Paul Nicholls' star continues to rise as anticipated, it may well come to be seen as the film which first revealed his genuine potential as a big screen actor. The former Eastenders heartthrob turns in a fine, sensitive performance as Charlie, gradually realising that he has to find a way to escape the constraints of the life that is shaping up in front of him. However, this isn't solely a Nicholls vehicle. Roland Manookian is outstanding as Justin, the dangerous, troubled companion for whom Charlie is the only source of stability. There's another good cameo from the ever-reliable Phil Daniels as an unbalanced Falklands veteran who becomes the catalyst for the rupture in their relationship and Charlie's escape. Other familiar faces cropping up include two more Eastenders veterans Nicola Stapleton and Edna Doré, and television presenter Dani Behr who is particularly good as the nurse Charlie befriends. The story is slight, but between them, partly thanks to Love's tight direction and script, the actors in Goodbye Charlie Bright generate a rather haunting little tragicomedy with moments of real pathos which deserves a long shelf life. -Piers Ford.

From the golden age of the miniseries comes Shogun, the 10-hour, Golden Globe-winning saga based on James Clavell's bestselling epic novel. In his award-winning performance, Richard Chamberlain stars as John Blackthorne, the 17th-century English navigator on a Dutch trading ship. A storm runs the ship aground off the coast of Japan, a "torn and cruelly divided country" locked in a power struggle between Toranaga (the venerable Toshiro Mifune) and Ishido, two warlords who would be Shogun. Blackthorne gets over his initial culture shock ("I piss on you and your country", he defiantly proclaims to his samurai captors, which to his humiliation turns out to be an unfortunate choice of words) to become a trusted ally of Toranaga and the lover of the beautiful interpreter Lady Mariko (Yoko Shimada). Their forbidden, ill-fated romance-and Blackthorne's total assimilation into Japanese culture-is set against political intrigue as Toranaga prepares for the inevitable showdown with Ishido, and Blackthorne's growing influence threatens the local Jesuits who had built up a lucrative trade monopoly. Shogun was a production blessed with good karma, and it remains an awesome achievement from a bygone era when the miniseries was king. -Donald Liebenson.

By getting nominated for Academy Awards in both the Foreign Language Film and Best Song categories, Les Choristes (The Chorus) made a rare (for a European film) double impression at the 2004 Oscars. This sentimental tale follows the arrival of a new teacher at a remote boys school in 1949 France (the war is a largely unspoken but ghostly presence). With disciplinary problems rampant, and the policies of the old-fashioned headmaster not helping, Monsieur Mathieu decides to introduce choral singing as a way to bridge the gap with his students. You don't need a crystal ball to figure out where this will go, although the movie uses its atmospheric location and lush vocal arrangements well. Bald, dumpy Gerard Jugnot provides a refreshingly offbeat hero: he's sort of a younger Philippe Noiret. Director Christophe Barratier works in the winsome-cute mode that makes a certain kind of French movie into an overly sweet bon bon, although at least this bon bon sings. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.

Based on the popular Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea, Ugly Betty is a biting comedy with plenty of heart. There are several ongoing plots, including murder, illegal immigration, infidelity, a vendetta, and death. And yes, this really is a comedy. Golden Globe winner America Ferrera (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Real Women Have Curves) stars as Betty, a whip-smart assistant at a women's magazine who is clueless when it comes to fashion. While her size 0 colleagues parade around in haute couture and stiletto heels, Betty shows up for work in her mismatched outfits, complete with thick glasses and awkward braces. The series, which made its debut during the 2006-2007 season on ABC, could've relied on physical humour for laughs. But the sharp writing and likeable cast bring the show to life. There's a lot going on in the first year. Besides setting Betty up as Mode magazine's ugly duckling overachiever, the first few episodes introduce viewers to a superb supporting cast that includes Betty's frenemies Amanda (Becki Newton) and Marc (Michael Urie), the hysterical duo that aligns themselves to whoever can best advance their careers. As for Betty's womanizing boss, Daniel (Eric Mabius), he's not the brightest bulb in the package. [+]

This BBC adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch is so remarkable that after viewing it disaffected English Literature students may find themselves revisiting the once-dreaded novel with pleasurable anticipation. Over the course of six hours, we are immersed in the lives of Dorothea Brooke, Mr Ladislaw, Dr Lydgate and, by the end, you'll be wanting even more. Set in the fictional town of Middlemarch in the early 19th century, the stories of the townsfolk are woven seamlessly together, with strands of political fervour and social commentary subtly incorporated. Dorothea (Juliet Aubrey) wants desperately to make something of her life; however, as a woman she is forbidden the study of Greek and Latin and no one takes her notions of societal improvement seriously. She chooses to marry the elderly Rev. Casaubon (Patrick Malahide), a scholarly man whom she can aid in his work. Meanwhile, new to Middlemarch is the handsome Dr Lydgate (Douglas Hodge), who has grand notions for running a free hospital and finding a cure for cholera. His plans are sidetracked, however, when the beautiful but materialistic Rosie Vincy (Trevyn McDowell) sets her sights on him. Other sub-plots run throughout, including Rev. Casaubon's dashing but disapproved-of cousin Will Ladislaw (Rufus Sewell), who has his eye on Dorothea; the scandals of banker Mr Bulstrode (Peter Jeffrey); and the prodigal son Fred Vincy (Jonathan Firth), who urgently wants the hand of Mary but can't find the money or an honest career to provide for her. [+]

Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Robert Gunton, William Sadler, Gil Bellows

A sad, melancholy ache pervades Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's haunting, moving film that, like his other movies, explores societal constraints and the passions that lurk underneath. This time, however, instead of taking on ancient China, 19th-century England, or '70s suburbia, Lee uses the tableau of the American West in the early '60s to show how two lovers are bound by their expected roles, how they rebel against them, and the repercussions for each of doing so-but the romance here is between two men. Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are two itinerant ranchers looking for work in Wyoming when they meet and embark on a summer sheepherding job in the shadow of titular Brokeback Mountain. The taciturn Ennis, uncommunicative in the extreme, finds himself opening up around the gregarious Jack, and the two form a bond that surprisingly catches fire one cold night out in the wilderness. Separating at the end of the summer, each goes on to marry and have children, but a reunion years later proves that, if anything, their passion for each other has grown significantly. And while Jack harbours dreams of a life together, the tight-lipped Ennis is unable to bring himself to even consider something so revolutionary. Its open, unforced depiction of love between two men made Brokeback an instant cultural touchstone, for both good and bad, as it was tagged derisively as the "gay cowboy movie," but also heralded as a breakthrough for mainstream cinema. Amidst all the hoopla of various agendas, though, was a quiet, heartbreaking love story that was both of its time and universal-it was the quintessential tale of star-crossed lovers, but grounded in an ever-changing America that promised both hope and despair. Adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's short story, the movie echoes the sparse bleakness of McMurtry's The Last Picture Show with its fading of the once-glorious West; but with Lee at the helm, it also resembles The Ice Storm, as it showed the ripple effects of a singular event over a number of people. As always, Lee's work with actors is unparalleled, as he elicits graceful, nuanced performances from Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the wives affected overtly and subliminally by their husbands' affair, and Gyllenhaal brings surprising dimensions to a character that could have easily just been a puppy dog of a boy. [+]

After a long wait-like the entire fifth season-Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is dating again. The sixth season of the popular HBO show starts with Carrie and her sparkly new potential, Berger (Ron Livingston), trying to leave past relationships and hit it off. The results are mixed (up to Berger's memorable exit), but the good news is Carrie is at it again, and a new love interest can be found in the member of a wedding party, an old high school flame (David Duchovny), or an über-famous painter (Mikhail Baryshnikov). As Carrie plays the field, her friends seem to be settling down, relatively speaking. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) decides that her affair with TiVo cannot compete when Mr. Perfect (Blair Underwood, at his most charming) moves into her building. Charlotte's (Kristin Davis) feelings for her "opposites attract" boyfriend (Evan Handler, perhaps fans' most-loved boyfriend) deepen, but they still have a few things to iron out. Most surprising is Samantha's (Kim Cattrall) hot relationship with waiter-actor-stud Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis) taking on something resembling love, despite Samantha's best intentions. Before the sixth season started in the summer of 2003, a bombshell hit: it was announced that this would be the finale. Fans, just getting over the truncated fifth season (due to half the cast getting pregnant), were beside themselves. [+]

Dramatically speaking, the third season of The Shield is dysfunctional in the best sense of the word. Relationships fester in a quagmire of personal and professional conflict and clashing agendas inspire some of the finest episodes of this volatile series. Detective Mackey (Michael Chiklis) struggles to save his crumbling family (including two autistic children) while his strike team endures internal tensions over their secret stash of stolen drug money. Shane (Walton Goggins) clashes with teammate Tavon (Brian J. White) with near-fatal consequences, and his demanding fiancée tests his loyalty to Mackey. Captain Aceveda (Benito Martinez) suffers unspeakable humiliation en route to city council promotion, engaging Wyms (CCH Pounder) in a battle of wills over proper command of "The Barn. " Dutch (Jay Karnes) pursues the "cuddler rapist" case and confronts the dark side of his soul, while Danny (Catherine Dent) revives her career and is re-partnered with Julien (Michael Jace), who suppresses his homosexuality in a desperate quest for conventional marriage and family. After Lemon (Kenneth Johnson) attempts a drastic solution to their "money train" worries, the shaken strike team faces a deeply uncertain future. As always, The Shield juggles multiple plotlines with relentless pacing and narrative economy, packing substantial character developments into all 15 action-packed episodes. This season's inclusion of a competitive decoy squad offers humour and professional sacrifice, and the pivotal David Mamet-directed episode "Strays" arrives at a shocking conclusion, with Mamet regulars Clark Gregg and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's wife) giving outstanding guest star performances. [+]

The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme-makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include the hapless efforts by Chris (Michael Imperioli) to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme-makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, and devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. -David Stubbs.

Not for nothing did Stefan Ruzowitzky's powerful film The Counterfeiters walk away with the Best Foreign Picture Oscar at the 2008 Academy Awards. And like the previous year's winner of the prize-the equally superb The Lives Of Others-there are some tough decisions for certain German citizens at the heart of it. The Counterfeiters, though, is set in West Germany in 1936. It tells the true story of history's biggest ever counterfeiting operation, set up by the Nazis. The mission? To forge foreign currency. And the king of counterfeiters proves to be Salomon Soroswitch, also known as Sally, who ultimately has to face the dilemma of what to do when he realises that his work is helping to fuel war. There are so many reasons to commend The Counterfeiters that it's tricky to know where to start. The cast, for instance, is uniformly excellent, and you could rightly wonder why Oscar overlooked both August Diehl and Karl Markovics for nominations. What's more, it's also stunningly, and very intelligently, directed, ratcheting up at times the kind of tension that hundreds of films try and fail to match every year. Married up to a script of three dimensional characters and historical reverence, it's a quite brilliant package, and one that stays with you long after the credits have rolled. [+]

Martin Scorcese handles directing duties in this 1986 sequel to the classic 1961 film The Hustler, which marks the return of Paul Newman to the role of pool shark Fast Eddie Felson. Anxious to break into the big time again, Eddie finds a talented protégé (Tom Cruise) to groom; but with the addition of the latter's manipulative girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and the wild streak in Cruise's character, the trio make for a fascinating portrait in group psychology. The cast is brilliant, the script by Richard Price (Clockers) is a paragon of tightly controlled character study and drama (at least in the film's first half), and Scorcese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus make an ornate show of the collision and flight of pool balls through space-something of a metaphor for the dynamics among the three principals. The film is generally regarded as weaker in its second half, and rightly so, as everything that was interesting in the first place disappears. Still, Newman won a deserved Oscar for his performance. -Tom Keogh.

The Lakes brought writer Jimmy McGovern and actor John Simm a great deal of critical praise in 1997. Following a particularly dry period for British TV drama, the show's realistic characterisations and their painfully honest decisions hit audiences hard. Simm is a twentysomething trapped in a life of compulsive gambling, theft and being on the dole in Liverpool. On a whim he heads north to the Lake District. He expects to find the countryside quietude where his hidden poetical leanings might find a home, but instead gets caught up in a community like any other. Lies, temptation and tragedy beset every household just as much as the big city. The focus of Series 1 is Danny's relationship with Emma (Emma Cunniffe) and the consequences of having a child. As time races by, his link to the Lakes becomes an exercise in torment when the eyes of blame fall easily upon him after the accidental deaths of four schoolgirls. Stoking the flames of a series of secondary explosions in waiting are a pair of affairs, one adulterous, the other complicated by religion. In the far longer sequel series that came two years later, these back-stories would come to the fore. [+]

Facing an indeterminate sentence of weeks/months/years until new episodes, Sopranos fans are advised to take the fifth; season, that is. At this point, superlatives don't do The Sopranos justice, but justice was at last served to this benchmark series. For the first time, The Sopranos rubbed out The West Wing to take home its first Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series. Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo also earned Best Supporting Actor and Actress honors for some of their finest hours as Christopher and Adriana. From the moment a wayward bear lumbers into the Sopranos' yard in the season opener, it is clear that The Sopranos is in anything but a "stagmire. " The series benefits from an infusion of new blood, the so-called "Class of 2004," imprisoned "family" members freshly released from jail. Most notable among these is Tony's cousin, Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi, who directed the pivotal season 3 episode "Pine Barrens"), who initially wants to go straight, but proves himself to be something of a "free agent," setting up a climactic stand-off between Tony and New York boss Johnny Sack. These 13 mostly riveting episodes unfold with a page-turning intensity with many rich subplots. Estranged couple Tony and Carmela (the incomparable James Gandolfini and Edie Falco) work toward a reconciliation (greased by Tony's purchase of a $600,000 piece of property for Carmela to develop). The Feds lean harder on an increasingly stressed-out and distraught Adriana to "snitch" with inevitable results. [+]