Late night TV

Some of the best films that I've seen lately have been ones recorded from late night television; Jules Dassin's Brute Force and The Naked City, John Boorman's Point Blank, Jean Renoir's The Diary of a Chambermaid, Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim and now Ida Lupino's The Bigamist. Which begs the question - why not show them earlier. Having criticised retailers for their bizarre DVD pricing policy, it seems only fair to do the same to TV schedulers. The worst offenders are Film 4, who not only endlessly repeat truly bad films, but when they do have something interesting, put it on at a time when very few are watching. Again, I accept I have certain specialist tastes, but since I'm pretty sure that no one wants to see Tommy O'Haver's Get Over It starring Kirsten Dunst ever again, they could at least try the experiment of giving a decent showing to the Ingmar Bergman films they've been so proudly trailing in recent months. This doesn't seem like rocket science or elitism gone mad.