The best films on BBC iPlayer

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It’s easy to lose yourself in choice as you scroll through myriad streaming services looking for your next favourite movie. And sometimes you just want a selection of quality films without the need for a subscription.
Enter BBC iPlayer, a film-fan’s best friend with a fine revolving collection of films, from Hollywood blockbusters and Brit flicks to cinema classics and family favourites — and what is more, beyond the licence fee, it won’t cost you another penny.
Most films that appear on BBC TV end up on iPlayer for 30 days after their first broadcast and some stay even longer. Our rolling list features our critics’ picks of what to watch and will be updated regularly as new films arrive on iPlayer and others leave the platform. Be sure to check the “available until” date under each film so you know how long you have to watch before it disappears into the digital ether.
What’s better than Tom Hardy? Two Tom Hardys in Brylcreem and sharp suits knocking seven bells out of one another in an East End gangster film based on the real-life story of the Kray twins. This biopic is an awful mess, but it’s worth a watch for Hardy alone. Oozing bullish menace, he plays Reggie and Ronnie in a miracle of CGI, split-screen, body-double wizardry. Legend proves that organised crime can become disorganised when it’s in the hands of two very different brothers. Available until August 15
With a masterclass in seductive creepiness from Peter Sarsgaard and a gale-force charm onslaught from Carey Mulligan, this spirited Sixties-set coming-of-age film is driven by first-rate performances. Sarsgaard plays David: he’s dashing, suave and the driver of a cool Bristol sports car. Jenny (Mulligan), the 16-year-old swot, is smitten. Yet from the beginning there is something imperceptibly wrong with David, one note that strikes slightly off key. Available until August 15
Hugh Hudson’s Oscar-winning tale of two runners competing in the 1924 Olympics has a simple, undiminished power. From the dramatic opening scene of a group of pale young men racing barefoot along the beach, backed by Vangelis’s Anthem, the film is utterly compelling. Taking its title from the hymn Jerusalem, it tells the true story of a race between two outsiders, Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) and Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross). Available until August 20
Kathryn Bigelow’s incendiary Iraq-set action movie deserved every award it scooped. The urgency of the storytelling and the unfussiness of the direction belie the stark poetry of this portrait of men at war. The conflict is shown from the perspective of an elite bomb-disposal team. Led by the reckless Staff Sergeant William James (an outstanding Jeremy Renner), these are soldiers whose perspectives are so bent out of shape by the constant threat of death that they find it hard to function anywhere but on the front line.Available until August 20
Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts star in a drama based on a true story co-written by María Belón, who survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Maria, Henry and their three children are enjoying a winter break in Thailand when disaster strikes. The tsunami tears through the luxury resort where the family are staying. Maria and one child are swept one way, Henry and the others in the opposite direction. The film’s recreation of the wave’s impact is genuinely horrifying. Available until August 22
Alan J Pakula’s taut account of the investigation by two journalists, played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, into the Watergate affair remains one of the greatest political thrillers. In the run-up to the 1972 presidential election Bob Woodward (Redford) is assigned to cover what initially seems to be a minor story — a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters — but the more he delves, the deeper into the heart of the Republican Party runs the chain of guilt. Available until September 4
Ronald Neame’s superior Second World War espionage drama recounts the story of Operation Mincemeat. Clifton Webb stars as Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, the British intelligence officer behind the most brilliant military deception of the conflict. The audacious scheme involved dumping on the Spanish coast the corpse of a fake British officer carrying bogus Allied plans, thus duping the Germans into believing that Greece, rather than Sicily, was about to be invaded in 1943. In a rare straight role an uncredited Peter Sellers impersonates the voice of the prime minister, Winston Churchill.Available until September 9
Alfonso Cuaron’s direction of this gloomy vision of the near future is exemplary. The premise of the film is that the human race stopped producing children and the UK is run like a police state, fringed with squalid internment camps. When a young refugee gets pregnant, she becomes a precious commodity. Clive Owen is the jaded former bureaucrat who finds himself guarding the last hope of humanity.Available until September 9
Although all of the musician biopic clichés are here in Love & Mercy, Bill Pohlad’s impressionistic account of the fall and rise of the Beach Boys visionary Brian Wilson, the execution is intriguing enough to make this particular biopic feel fresh, new even. The story jumps between two parallel timelines. The first, featuring Paul Dano as the younger Brian, shows the musician at the peak of his creativity. The second features John Cusack as a broken, cowed Brian in the 1980s struggling to rebuild a life and a mind that fell apart under the pressure of his career. Available until September 9
“Do you really believe in the perfect murder?” The former British tennis star Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) certainly does, and when he discovers that his wife is having an affair he decides to plan it. However, the best-laid plans, as we know all too well from Robert Burns, “gang aft agley”. Alfred Hitchcock’s detective thriller, adapted by Frederick Knott from his hit stage play, delights in the unravelling of Wendice’s scheme, as well as the ingenuity of his plan B. Grace Kelly is marvellous as Wendice’s spouse, who fights against her would-be killer (Anthony Dawson), while Hitchcock uses staging to great effect.Available until September 10
Shelagh Delaney, the playwright who produced her remarkable debut A Taste of Honey while still a teenager in 1958, adapted Jennifer Johnston’s 1984 novel. Set against the modern Irish Troubles, it follows the slow-burn relationship between a widow and a maimed American war veteran, who meet in a remote coastal village in Ireland where he is restoring the local railway station building. It reunited Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland more than 20 years after their memorable appearance in the film Don’t Look Now.Available until February 2025
The first of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy of novels, set in Dublin’s deprived northern suburbs, inspired the director Alan Parker’s big-hearted musical romp, which caused a minor sensation when it came out. More than 3,000 local musicians auditioned to be part of the ragged soul music band at the heart of Doyle’s rollicking rags-to-rags story. Before Andrew Strong turned up, the part of Deco was conceived for someone slim and sexy. Van Morrison was in line to play Joey the Lips, while Bronagh Gallagher holds the record jointly (with Joe Pesci in Goodfellas) for the most frequent use of the f-word in a film. Available until February 2025
This adaptation of Alan Bennett’s award-winning play features the cast that starred in the original production at the National Theatre in London. The actors — including, in early roles, James Corden, Russell Tovey and Sacha Dhawan, as well as Andrew Knott and Dominic Cooper, — are grammar school boys aiming for Oxford University places. Richard Griffiths plays the controversial humanities master Hector; Stephen Campbell Moore is Irwin, the tutor brought in to whittle them into shape. This acerbic musing on class and education doesn’t quite escape its stage origins, but the joy is in the sparkling dialogue and savage repartee.Available until April 2025
Imagine the Eddie the Eagle movie, only with golfing as the backdrop instead of ski jumping. And then imagine the Oscar winner Mark Rylance in the lead role, delivering another one of those idiosyncratic performances of tiny gestures, pauses, sighs and grimaces that somehow coalesce into a sympathetic marvel. He plays Maurice Flitcroft, a former crane operator who tricked his way into the British Open golf championship in 1976. Available until May 2025
This adaptation of the novel by Virginia Woolf is carried by a fine performance from Vanessa Redgrave. An elegantly structured story of intersecting lives in London, 1923, it follows Clarissa Dalloway (Redgrave) as she goes flower shopping for a party she is hosting. Meanwhile, a young man (Rupert Graves) is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And unexpectedly, Clarissa’s former suitor, returns from India. Mrs Dalloway relives a crucial moment from her past and her reasons for choosing this life, with her MP husband. Available until June 2025
Set against the backdrop of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first-time director Tom Hooper’s absorbing and well-acted legal drama stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as an ANC politician confronting the former apartheid policeman who tortured him, played by Jamie Bartlett. Hilary Swank co-stars as the locally born lawyer who returns from US exile to represent him. Available for more than a year
Carey Mulligan gives a gripping and nuanced turn as the mother from heaven and hell in this startling directorial debut from the actor Paul Dano. Set in the early 1960s and adapted from the Richard Ford novel of the same name, it introduces us to Jeanette (Mulligan), a chipper housewife in rural Montana who dotes on her 14-year-old son, Joe (Ed Oxenbould), and dutifully tends to her embittered former golfer husband, Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal). When a wildfire suddenly drags Jerry from the narrative (he joins an out-of-town firefighting unit), Jeanette seizes the moment to discover her true identity with a booze-fuelled affair and abandonment of the perfect-mom routine. You’ll root for Jeanette even as you flinch at her actions.Available for more than a year
James Norton plays John, a window cleaner in Belfast who, in the final weeks of terminal brain cancer, embarks on a cross-country interview marathon with possible parents for his four-year-old son. The potential for melodrama is omnipresent, but the director Uberto Pasolini imbues the proceedings with a welcome “less is more” approach.Available for more than a year
This astonishing feature debut from the Scottish director Charlotte Wells is a portrait of paternal love, its protean nature and the lingering impact it leaves on adult life. The film pivots around two grounded turns from Paul Mescal and the 12-year-old newcomer Frankie Corio. They’re a Scottish father and daughter, Calum and Sophie, on holiday in a cheap Turkish resort in the late 1990s, and burdened by an urgent mission to connect and compensate for his apparent absence from her life. Available until February 2025
Tonally similar to the Coen brothers’ Fargo, Sam Raimi’s tense thriller has an impressive body count. Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) and his slow-witted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) stumble on a crashed plane deep in the woods. Inside is the body of the pilot and a bag containing $4 million. The men decide to hide the money until the plane wreck is discovered with the spring thaw. Then, if nobody notices, they will split the cash. The plan seems simple enough, but things have a habit of getting messy … Available for more than a year
One of Terry Gilliam’s darkest films, this dystopian time-travelling science-fiction film stars Bruce Willis as the convict James Cole. The year is 2035 and Cole has been offered parole. The catch is, he has to travel back in time to thwart a killer disease that has wiped out most of humanity and sent the survivors underground to shelter from the now-poisoned air. Unfortunately, when he arrives in the past, shortly before the onset of the plague, nobody believes him and he finds himself incarcerated in a secure mental unit. Gilliam’s direction is abrasive but it gels brilliantly with the disorientating material. Brad Pitt co-stars as the insane son of Christopher Plummer’s eminent scientist.Available for more than a year
At the age of 25 Orson Welles directed his first film, which he co-wrote, produced and starred in, demonstrating an audaciously precocious and fully formed talent. While it is extraordinary to think that this is a directorial debut, the scope of the ambition is such that perhaps only a newcomer to the medium, not used to the compromises that are an integral part of film-making, would have attempted it. The story starts with the death of the newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (Welles) — loosely based on William Randolph Hearst — on his Florida estate. He utters a final word: “Rosebud.” A reporter interviews friends of the great man to try to unravel its meaning. Genuinely innovative film-making.Available for more than a year
Milos Forman’s biopic of the actor and avant-garde comedian Andy Kaufman is driven by a revelatory performance from Jim Carrey, who seems to channel the late Kaufman’s anarchic spirit to such an extent that it’s a little uncomfortable to watch. Unpredictable, bizarre and baffling, Kaufman would appear on stage in numerous incarnations, including the self-declared “intergender wrestling champion of the world”. The film is rather more conventional. Still, there’s no question that Forman and Carrey are striving to capture the spirit of the man. Available for more than a year
Your name is Merian C Cooper. You’re a 38-year-old former First World War bomber pilot turned movie producer. It’s two years into the Great Depression and you want to make a cinematic splash. So what do you do? Social commentary? Crime flick? Nope. You shoot a film about a giant ape who likes beating up dinosaurs and has a thing for blondes. You make it for $670,000, call it King Kong, and the rest is blockbuster history. Yet the beauty of Kong is in its ramshackle simplicity. The story of a 25ft ape who’s dragged from the jungles of Indonesia to the streets of New York is told via an 18in-tall rubber gorilla covered in rabbit fur, surrounded by recycled props and shot on recycled sets. Somehow all these elements combine into a timeless classic.Available for more than a year
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