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Paul Howlett's TV film picks: Flyboys | About a Boy | Ask the Dust

Flyboys (Tony Bill, 2006) 8pm, Sky Movies Drama This first world war movie about the Lafayette Escadrille - the American volunteers who fought with the French air force - is a sort of Biggles-era Top Gun, with James Franco a smouldering hero and Jean Reno the young Yanks' commander. Despite being weighed down by every war-movie cliche ever invented, it gets off the ground with great gusto: an old-fashioned and handsome adventure. About a Boy (Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz, 2002) 9pm, ITV2 North London slacker Will (Hugh Grant) is determined to live in splendid, self-centred isolation ("I am an island!"), but his defences are eroded by a troubled teenager (Nicholas Hoult), his depressed mother (Toni Collette) and the single mum he fancies (Rachel Weisz). American Pie directors, the Weitz brothers, make a genuinely funny, moving job of this Nick Hornby adaptation. Ask the Dust (Robert Towne, 2006) 12.55am, Film4 Robert Towne, who scripted the classic Chinatown, returns to 1930s Los Angeles as director/screenwriter, and imagines a very different world of young, troubled lovers. Adapted from John Fante's novel, it stars an awkward Colin Farrell as a would-be author failing to seize happiness with Mexican waitress Salma Hayek. Intriguing, but a little dreary. TV pick of the week Television (read more)