Much loved, yes. But Dickens’s novel is probably little read by modern audiences and so a chance to see a new adaptation of this tale of discontent, riot and general mayhem set in the French revolution and spread across London and Paris in the late 1700s should be a genuine treat for theatregoers.

Rippling outward from the initial story of a seemingly nice WASP woman who finds herself having to adapt in a women's prison, Orange Is the New Black quickly developed into the most multilayered, almost indigestibly rich of American TV dramas.

Opera directors must, I suppose, direct. But one could wish that they kept their mouths shut, at least outside the rehearsal studio. The condescension in Longborough’s programme-book interview with the director (Orpha Phelan) and designer (Madeleine Boyd) of the festival’s new Fidelio beggars belief.

On the face of it a murder mystery, The Night Of develops steadily into a panoramic survey of the American justice and prison system and attitudes to race and class. Produced by BBC Drama and HBO, it's based on the BBC's 2008 series Criminal Justice (which starred Ben Whishaw). The good news is you can watch all eight episodes right away on Now TV.

There’s much more to Brendan J Byrne’s engrossing, even-handed documentary Bobby Sands: 66 Days than its title might at first suggest. The timeline that led up to the death on 5 May 1981 of the IRA prisoner provides the immediate context – an increasingly dramatic one as the countdown of Sands’s hunger strike nears its inexorable conclusion. But the film’s interest is broader, not least in examining his role as a symbolic figure, both in the immediate context of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and across a much wider historical perspective.

David Sington’s The Fear of 13 is many things – blisteringly immediate, compelling, emotionally devastating – but at times it may have you pondering whether it fits into any traditional “documentary” category.

The initial challenge – and there should be no underestimating the scale of it – of Nick Read’s documentary Russia's Toughest Prison - The Condemned must have been getting into a location which the great majority of its inmates will never leave. That was likely facilitated by the acquaintance between the film’s producer Mark Franchetti, the longterm Moscow correspondent of The Sunday Times, and Subkhan Dadashov, the laconic governor of Penal Colony 56: Franchetti had been the first foreigner to visit this remote prison in the Urals at the beginning of the last decade.

Director David Mackenzie tells us in this disc’s extras that Starred Up is his first genre film, and Fox’s low-rent sleeve art suggests that this could be another dreary, thuggish Britflick. The prison drama clichés come thick and fast, from the hard-nosed governor to the attack in the shower block. There’s a well-meaning outsider helping prisoners deal with anger issues, copious, bloody violence and a sweaty gym scene.

Director David MacKenzie has made a prison drama for those who don’t like the genre and an ace in the hole for those who do. Starred Up is an example of how quality filmmaking captures an audience no matter what the topic – and here, that quality includes skilful cinematography, a tight script and tremendous performances from both leading and supporting cast. The result is that we get to see how the horror of prison life reflects the violent pockets of society outside.

There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train Robbery in which crooks made off with £2.6million, Detective Chief Superintendent Butler had come to arrest Charlie Wilson and was knocking on his door.