The Hollow Crown: Henry V, BBC Two

THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY V Tom Hiddleston offers a star of England in melancholy mode

Tom Hiddleston offers a star of England in melancholy mode

Forget the ages-old talk of London buses arranging their schedules so that they all arrive at once. The capital's patterns of public transport have nothing on the rapidity with which Henry V has hoved into view of late, whether at Shakespeare's Globe, on tour from the all-male Propeller company, in repertory at Islington's Old Red Lion pub theatre or as a baleful conclusion to the BBC's impressive Hollow Crown series of the Bard-on-film.

The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2, BBC Two

THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY IV PART 2: Jeremy Irons's ailing king steals Shakespearean diptych

Irons's ailing king steals Shakespearean diptych

One intends no discredit to the keenly judged monarch-to-be that is Tom Hiddleston's Prince Hal, who will reappear on the small screen next weekend carrying the story forward in Henry V, to point out that Richard Eyre's terrific BBC adaptation of Henry IV Part 2 was stolen by dad. Playing the ailing King Henry who will not go gently into the good night, Jeremy Irons gave a performance of equal parts fury and passion that ranks with this actor's very best.

The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 1, BBC Two

THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY IV PART ONE: The second instalment of the BBC's celluloid Shakespeare is fit for the cinema

The second instalment of the BBC's celluloid Shakespeare is fit for the cinema

Now we're talking! Following on from a small-screen Richard II of greater aural than visual interest, along comes Richard Eyre's TV adaptation of both Henry IV plays, and the first thing that seems evident about Part One is how well it would hold up in the cinema.

The Deep Blue Sea

A tin-full of polish and this adaptation from the great Terence Davies still fails to shine

The Deep Blue Sea, the latest from justly esteemed British director Terence Davies, shares its name with a Renny Harlin movie about genetically modified sharks (well, give or take a definite article). Both films deal in high anxiety and the looming spectre of death and both indulge in their own particular brand of theatrics. And - this may surprise you – as cinema, the shark movie works better.

DVD: Archipelago

Repression, resentment and rage: Joanna Hogg's latest dispatch from the bourgeois frontline

At the end of Joanna Hogg’s acutely observed drama of bourgeois manners, Patricia (Kate Fahy) and her grown-up children Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and Edward (Tom Hiddleston) restore to the living-room wall of their Scilly Isles holiday house a painting they’d removed for being “rather horrible".

Thor

3D graphics and 2D gods: Marvel's version of Norse myth is best when earthbound

As genres go, it’s a broad church: the tale of the alien who visits our world (our world obviously being contemporary America) encompasses everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Galaxy Quest. The story tends to riff on the same tension: how our planet shapes up in the eyes of intergalactic visitors. It can be done for laughs, for thrills, even for tears (see, if you are indeed an alien and haven't already, ET). Thor, in which the titular Norse god is exiled to small-town New Mexico, makes a play for all three.

Archipelago

Joanna Hogg's follow-up to Unrelated is an exquisite study of family strife

Upper-middle-class familial relations are placed under an unflattering spotlight in Joanna Hogg’s rich, resonant and often scathingly comic drama, which triumphantly harnesses the power of the unsaid and the unseen. Like its predecessor Unrelated, Archipelago is a superior, stylistically distinct work that is utterly, almost cringingly credible.