Freeview film of the day: The Ghost

The Ghost ★★★★
9.00-11.40pm ITV4

Best to forget Tony and Cherie Blair while you’re watching Roman Polanski’s dark but hugely enjoyable political thriller and… no, wait. On second thoughts, keep them in mind; it adds greatly to the pleasure. Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter sent to America to write the memoirs of a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan). Brosnan, along with his formidable wife and chief political adviser (Olivia Williams), is stuck in the USA because there are moves afoot in Britain to prosecute him for war crimes to do with the rendition of terrorist suspects. McGregor is his second ghostwriter, the first one having been found drowned, which should have given the hint that this is no straightforward assignment. Nor is it. The first ghost’s unfinished manuscript is, like Brosnan himself, coolly bland and unrevealing, but as McGregor delves deeper it becomes clear that dangerous secrets lie within it. Everything boils up to an explosive climax with a nicely disguised twist in the tail.