We won't be seeing any movies at the pictures for quite some time clearly ... so here's my new year guide to the best films on the box you can look forward to seeing in the first couple of weeks at least ... starting on New Year's Day ... with a British horror classic ...

: 'One of the most personal and mature statements in the history of British cinema' David Pirie on #bestfilmonTVtoday Fri Jan 1: Michael Reeves' WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968) @TalkingPicsTV 9.45pm https://www.timeout.com/movies/witchfinder-general & here's Robin Wood on Michael Reeves https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/movie/contents/in_memorium_michael_reeves.pdf

#bestfilmonTVtoday: Sat Jan 2 ... one of the great film epics ... Anthony Mann’s EL CID (1961) @TalkingPicsTV 6pm ‘Mann's splendid eye for landscape, composition, and spectacle’ https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/el-cid/Film?oid=1049222

#bestfilmonTVtoday: Sun Jan 3 Oscar-nominated drama EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (2015) ‘with its haunting river journeys and hair-raising episodes of Western colonists running amok, plays like an environmentalist’s remake of Apocalypse Now’ @film4 1.05am https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/embrace-of-the-serpent/Film?oid=21334465

#bestfilmonTVtoday: Mon Jan 4 Mike Leigh’s poignant ANOTHER YEAR (2010) @Film4 11.45pm ... ‘Both Mike Leigh and Woody Allen make movies about people encased in their unhappiness... Leigh's greatest insight, that true happiness is not found but realised’ https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/another-year/Film?oid=2800205

#bestfilmonTVtoday Tue Jan 5 Brilliant Paul Newman in powerhouse family drama HUD (1962) @TalkingPicsTV 10pm https://www.timeout.com/movies/hud-2  ‘a remarkably clear-eyed account of growing up in Texas to mourn the old free-ranging ways of the frontier days’

#bestfilmonTVtoday Wed Jan 6 'It’s gorgeous, one of the most entrancing and elemental landscape films ever shot in these isles, thanks in large part to Nicolas Roeg’s peerless cinematography' FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967) @LondonLive 1.50pm https://www.timeout.com/movies/far-from-the-madding-crowd

#bestfilmonTVtoday Thu Jan 7: 'surprisingly moving, delicately handled and full of lovely vignettes. Unlikely as it may seem, this was the inspiration for Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer.' https://www.timeout.com/movies/last-holiday THE LAST HOLIDAY @TalkingPicsTV 7.15pm

#bestfilmonTVtoday Fri Jan 8: 'an excellent film which combines wry humor and gritty action with in-depth characterisations of two youths on the lam in the Civil War west.' @Variety ... BAD COMPANY (1972) @tcmuk 1.15am

#bestfilmonTVtoday: Sat Jan 9: Here's the real thing ... Powell and Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS (1946) @BBCTwo 1.15pm 'Powell's extravagant visual style transforms it into a landscape of the mind—grand and terrible in its thorough abstraction' @dave_kehr https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/black-narcissus/Film?oid=5989992

#bestfilmonTVtoday: Sun Jan 10: 'Ineffable tripe which mixes a heady stew of kitsch, culture and Freud ...' Sounds fun. https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-seventh-veil THE SEVENTH VEIL (1945) @TalkingPicsTV 10pm

#bestfilmonTVtoday Mon Jan 11: Cassavetes' final film gets short shrift but this has to be the greatest film with a figure like 17% on the @RottenTomatoes Tomatometer. BIG TROUBLE (1985) is tremendous fun and is on @sonymovieuk Soy Movies Classic 10.55pm https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/big-trouble/Film?oid=1150988

#bestfilmonTVtoday Tue Jan 12: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975) @Film4 4.20pm with the late, great Sean Connery ... 'the film has genuine wit, an appealing sense of grandeur, and very little of the overt "philosophizing" that marred much of Huston's work' https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-man-who-would-be-king/Film?oid=1064343

#bestfilmonTVtoday Wed Jan 13: TWO RODE TOGETHER (1961) @Film4 1.05pm ... 'John Ford’s darkest and most bitter film' @dave_kehr, here on this and other outliers among the great director's filmography ... https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/movies/homevideo/tcm-offers-john-ford-the-columbia-films-collection.html

#bestfilmonTVtoday Thu Jan 14: Thursday film club continues on @BBCFOUR 10pm with WHISKY GALORE! (1949) 'Mackendrick's direction of the ensemble cast is impeccable ... the film hangs on a superb sense of community —both in the story and in its making' https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/whisky-galore/Film?oid=1073379

#bestfilmonTVtoday Fri Jan 15: Fritz Lang's MINISTRY OF FEAR (1945) @Film4 1.15pm has not been on TV for over a decade. '...reminiscent of Lang's expressionist films of the 20s, but this is a more mature, more controlled film, Lang at his finest & purest' https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ministry-of-fear/Film?oid=1052286