Satellite & cable: Pick of the Day

IT MAY lose some of its visual grandeur on the small screen, but Anthony Minghella's multi-Oscar-winning romance The English Patient (10pm Sky Premier) is still well worth catching. Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas (right) shine as Count Laszlo Almasy and Katherine Clifton, the pair who embark on an illicit affair in the Sahara Desert just before the Second World War. In the complex plot, adapted from the Booker Prize-winning novel by Michael Ondaatje, Almasy reflects on the liaison while being tended by nurse Juliette Binoche a few years later.

The Professionals (6pm Granada Plus) has undergone a revival in popularity thanks to a recent series of spoof adverts. Check out how large those flares really were in this secret-agent series with Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins.