Freeview film of the day: Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler ★★★★★
Premiere 9.00-10.50pm BBC2

All hail, Riz Ahmed! With a portfolio of smart TV dramas (Britz, HBO’s The Night Of, Girls) and varied films (Shifty, Four Lions, Rogue One), the modest British Pakistani actor, still only 34, was named as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2017. But it was 2013 indie thriller Nightcrawler that gave him his big American break, playing the guileless, penniless assistant to Jake Gyllenhaal’s amoral, ambulance-chasing video-journalist. In writer/director Dan Gilroy’s sleazily acerbic portrait of nocturnal LA, Gyllenhaal uses police radio scanners and a camcorder to capture lurid crimes, selling the footage to cable boss Rene Russo (a part deserving of her overlooked skills). Ethical and moral lines blur and our antiheroes risk their own safety to get the scoop in a movie that could be described as an update of Network for the digital media age. Bourne Legacy co-writer Gilroy’s screenplay was Oscar-nominated. Riz Ahmed also stars in The Reluctant Fundamentalist tomorrow.