Digital, Cable and Satellite Television: Pick of the Day

JOHN CLEESE (right) has had what you might describe as a mixed film career, with huge hits such as A Fish Called Wanda set against such dismal failures as Fierce Creatures. Two of his more successful cinema outings are featured in tonight's double-bill. It kicks off with Privates on Parade (8pm FilmFour), an entertaining tragi-comic reading of the 1977 RSC stage hit. Cleese plays an uptight major in the Song and Dance Unit of the British Army in South- East Asia just after the Second World War. Dennis Quilley does a marvellous turn as The Queen of the Boards.

Later there is And Now for Something Completely Different (11.35pm FilmFour), a selection of sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus, including the one that bores at the party always recite to you verbatim: the "Dead Parrot".