for the best light bulbs in america. illuminating! and we escape to the greek idyll of the island of hydra for a love story that started 56 years and resulted in some of the most heartbreaking and famous songs of the 1960s. marianne and leonard, leonard cohen, words of love, it's called. and so, horrible histories. is there something i should be taking my nieces to? are they going to enjoy this? yeah, i think so. i mean, horrible histories are a boon for parents and adults. it's one of those shows that both the kids and the parents can watch and enjoy. it's had great success on tv, where it's got more of a sketch format, so they'll do romans, do victorians and they'll do the greeks and they'll do the 1940s and wartime. this is them just doing one thing, rotten romans, they've made the transition to the big screen. a bit more like the books, which just concentrate on one aspect. yes, yes. and it hasn't got the original cast. so if you're a fan of mathew baynton, simon farnaby and alice lowe from the tv, they're not really in this. some of them make cameos, but they've truly gone a bit starry for this. they've got quite a lot of famous faces, but more importantly they've gone to roman britain, which every kid studied and every kid's an expert on. so yes, the young roman emperor, emperor nero, played by craig roberts, dominated his mum, played by kim cattral off sex and the city, she's not in the originals! he sends a young roman called atticus, atti, off to britain, he's banished him off to the wilds of the empire, the stain of the empire, the unattainable stain of the empire, which is here, britain, where boudicca is rousing the troops and the celts to rebellion and inspiring young women all over the place to take up arms, much to the disappointment of their father's. here young orla, played by emilia jones, has got atti, played by sebastian croft, and nick frost isn't too happy about it. now, who says i'm not ready to be a warrior? orla, what have you done? taken a roman prisoner. all on my own. see, told you i could do it. you're just going to have to take him back. what? i thought you'd be pleased. you can't keep a prisoner, it's hard work! you have to feed it, you have to exercise it. who's going to clean up after him? i am here, you know. he's my prisoner, i found him, i want to keep him. 0k, fine. you'll get bored soon enough and then someone will have to get rid of him. there's no pleasing some people. good fun? i liked it. yeah, yeah. what i like about it, jane, is we're so used to these pixar films which are perfect and committee—honed and the jokes are perfect and everything looks great you know, it's just a carapace of perfection. this one looks like it's been shot in your local park! i like that ropiness. there's a kind of ad—hocness to it, to use a nice latin phrase. and i like that and i thought that imperfection was good. there are lots of funny gags, lots of fart gags, lots of alexander armstrong, lots of nick frost, sanjeev bhaskar, rupert graves. people pop up and make cameo appearances. derekjacobi in there. i really enjoyed it. high vs all—round. i love that derekjacobi's playing claudius! only people as old as me get that. that's funny. it is funny. that's good. there's a gag for the adults. that's to get the parents in. the current war, which you kind of feel should be good, is it? look at the cast. benedict cumberbatch playing thomas edison. michael shannon, who is always brilliant, playing george westinghouse. you're saying, well, who are these two? it's held as a battle for the future of america. it's about whether your going to use alternating current or direct current to light up america. now that's exciting, isn't it? it should be. it was quite important. it was very important. i suppose in a way it's the vhs versus betamax, the lycos versus google, the way the big brands battle now. i suppose that was what was going to be interesting about it, unfortunately... i feel there is a but coming. there's a massive but. ijust didn't really know... there was light bulb moments all—round, and the person who green lit this film... i'm going to do so many lighting puns... ..because there's no heart to it. you don't really know what they're arguing about. there's even the invention of the electric chair and neither of them really want to be associated with that. so there's a moral element. but there's just no danger orjeopardy involved and you're wondering, why on earth with this cast, which has got tom holland, you've got nicholas hoult, you've got matthew macfadyen, you've got tuppence middleton, catherine waterston. .. again, it should be good, but... it should be good, but, you know, the current war, it's a ‘turn off‘. 0k. end of lighting puns and electric puns. thank you so much. take us onto your third choice of the week. it's holiday time, so let's go to greece. yes, let's. let's go to the island of hydra — marianne & leonard: words of love. marianne is a beautiful norwegian woman called marianne ihlen. leonard is leonard cohen, who became one of the most famous depressing songwriters of the 1960s. songs like suzanne and the uplifting hallelujah. this is when they met on the greek island of hydra in the 1960s, and it was sort of taken over by poets and artists and hippies, and there was lots of free love and it's kind of like love island in the ‘60s but with people who could actually read! and into this comes the documentary maker nick broomfield, who we know, he's a ratherfamous documentary maker with his t—shirts and hisjeans and his room mike and his recording equipment slung across him. he inserts himself into this story in a way he's never done before. he actually becomes marianne‘s lover. here is nick broomfield reccalling the heavy days of the ‘60s in hydra. i was mesmerised by the island's beauty, and had never before met so many golden, sun—kissed people of either sex having so much fun together. it felt like anything was possible. marianne gave me my very first acid trip, which she said had come from a friend of leonard's in london, called malcolm. and she took these pictures of me the morning after. i had no intention of leaving, but then one of marianne's other lovers unexpectedly showed up on the island, and i found myself hastily boarding the next boat back to athens. reference to other lovers sort of gives you a sense of the time and what was going on. free love i think it was called. you get a sense of that. and i think there's a moment in this way you think, "gosh, that sounds great!" i wish that can obtain! but it obviously can't, it can't sustain itself, this lotus—eating existence they had in hydra. and it was part of the hippie trail. it was too much, there was an excess of poetry and drugs and lying around and sun, sea and sex and all of that, you can't sustain it. but they had this love affair, marianne and leonard, that did sustain each other for 56 years. he went off and became a pop or a rockstar, and was rather promiscuous around the world, leaving marianne rather hurt. but they kept having this love story, and it keeps coming back to this throughout the career. and i think it's rather brilliant. i think it's one of those films that makes you remember those fleeting love stories, what it is about love that that endures and obtains. and they had a very pure love, even though it got caught up in many different things and time and years, but there was a gorgeousness to it, an idyll that's preserved, and it's very much about a holiday romance that almost lasted a lifetime. it's about what love really is. and it looks very beautiful. i mean, do you need to like his music? do you need to be interested in him as a musician? or is that really secondary? i think that's secondary. yes, you do hear a bit of leonard cohen and you'll think, "oh, i didn't know he did that song." i didn't really know much about leonard cohen myself. but it was more about her, and it's more about love. it became very personal. when you're watching it you kind of insert yourself, like nick broomfield does, and you say, "i remember people who were influential on me. i remember moments that reflect my own life and turning points," and i think that's what it's about, which is why i think it's so universal. i think it's one of the best films of the year, and one of the best films that nick broomfield's ever made, and he's made some really good ones. ah, that's interesting. certainly the most emotional. i was welling up by the end of it. it's a love story in the form of a documentary. another love story is best out this week, still best out for a lot of people, only you. i know, mark kermode has been liking this one as well. i think it's a very fine british film. it doesn't even look like a british film. it such a good british film it doesn't look like a british film. it looks like a french film starring a spanish star... i love british films! but this one has that european sexiness and freedom to it, and it confronts the issues. again, it's about what love‘s like and again it's about the difficulties of maintaining love through the travails of trying to conceive, the travails of health. josh o'connor, whose brilliant in it, he's about to be prince charles in the crown... he's a serious rising star, isn't he? yes, serious rising star. and if you want to know what rince trials looks like without any clothes on, you have to watch only you, because that's what it is, it'sjosh o'connor. laia costa's fantastic as well. directed by harry wootliff, who is a woman, we should say. brings an excellent touch to her very first film. only you — if you can find it, please do. it's really worth it. it's very beautiful, actually. a sort of simple film in a lovely way. i mean that in a really lovely way. yeah. and a quick thought about what we should be streaming or watching on dvd this week? yeah, just. that's what they do, they drop them there. everywhere else they get released, on netflix, they're dropped. it is the great hack, which is a chilling documentary about the harvesting of all our data. all our likes, our dislikes, what we like to do. we are predictable. all our likes, all our dislikes, what we like to do. they uses them to create the two big little shocks of our time — trump and brexit. it's not really a disputed fact, cambridge analytical come under the microscope there. the journalist carol cadwalladr is featured. you think, "oh, you see the injustice of it because you, icon all of us, we've all been played by this data harvest that's been going on. watch if you dare perhaps? there's not much you can do about it, and your data's probably being harvested even while you watch it probably on netflix, but it is a very, very fine film. we are all malleable, all susceptible to opinion, particularly those of film critics. thank you very much jason. see you next week. thanks for being with us. enjoy your cinema going. bye— bye. some of us were lucky enough to have sunshine this weekend. rochdale and greater manchester opened 90 millimetres of rain. that is over a month's millimetres of rain. that is over a months worth of main just over this weekend —— rain. you can see this across into north—west england and northern ireland. it is still there but i am pleased to say it is starting to weaken off a touch of his ribbon of cloud on the satellite picture, that is the weather front. at the same time, showers are moving their way across parts of eastern scotla nd their way across parts of eastern scotland and some of these are quite heavy with maybe the odd rumble of thunder through the night tonight. it does mean that in scotland and northern ireland tomorrow, we start off on northern ireland tomorrow, we start offona northern ireland tomorrow, we start off on a cloudy, damp note. that shift steadily northwards and wea ke ns shift steadily northwards and weakens itself to a band of showers. elsewhere, particularly where we have seen the wet weather, sunshine. by have seen the wet weather, sunshine. by the end of the afternoon, rain is coming again. this time across the isles of scilly and cornwall. it will bring sharp, thundery downfalls tickly across the southwest and into parts of wales, accompanied by a gusty winds, dusts in excess on the coasts of a0 mph or more. it will be a wendy story does make windy story. we will see the best of the drier weather and maybe the warmth. —— windy story. below is still with us and it was slowly drift eastwards. that means the emphasis, by the middle part of the week whether thundery are going to be, down into the north of england and eastern england. far north of scotland will stay dry and sunny and northern ireland, wales, south—west england, again, a dry story. in terms of the feel of things, the temperatures will probably peek from 18 to 22 degrees. a little bit down on where they should be for this time of year. the low will start to drift its way off into the north sea and that will allow high pressure to build thursday into friday, quite a speu build thursday into friday, quite a spell of weather and perhaps a little warmer as well. certainly all change this week. we have lost the heat wave conditions and it will feel much fresher out there that there will be a frequent rash of sunshine and thundery downpours and the winds are going to be quite a feature this week. we have lost the heat wave conditions. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: after a weekend of protests in hong kong, the beijing government announces a news conference to respond to the crisis. ryan police have been moving people through the streets stop there now making arrests —— right police stop me they've fired more tear reinforcements are coming in. —— right police. the crisis in the territory is now in its eighth week, and there's no sign of it ending. i'm nuala mcgovern in london. also in the programme: russia's leading opposition activist is rushed to hospital. his friends fear he was poisoned in prison.

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