Freeview film of the day: The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner ★★★★
Premiere 10.25pm-12.35am C4

There are five novels in James Dashner’s bestselling dystopian Maze Runner series and two film adaptations so far, directed by art department graduate Wes Ball. In this first part, our lithe young-adult principals are dropped into a world that’s part Hunger Games, part Lord of the Flies, part Saw. A rather bland Dylan O’Brien wakes up in a lift that delivers him to the Glade, a clearing surrounded by stone walls behind which lies the MazeÉ it opens only at night, can’t be mapped and regularly allows nasty things in. Brits Kaya Scodelario (star of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean adventure), Will Poulter (The Revenant) and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Game of Thrones) liven up the cast – currently wrapping part three, The Death Cure, for 2018 release – and your enjoyment will rest on your taste for systematic puzzles and teen in-fighting. It’s action-packed, gloomy and just about allegorical of our times.