Sellers as you never see him

STEPHEN Hopkins' film may be the first biopic about a celebrated entertainer to portray its hero as wholly contemptible.

Life and Death of Peter Sellers

MANY actors have played multiple roles in films -- John Cleese in the Monty Python pictures, Alec Guinness doing eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, Eddie Murphy playing the title role and every member of the prof's family in The Nutty Professor -- a feat matched by Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Thursday, 10.40pm, 7Two).

 Stephen Hopkins' film may be the first biopic about a celebrated entertainer to portray its hero as wholly contemptible. Rush delivers a performance of astonishing virtuosity, giving the spoiled, self-pitying and deceitful Sellers a kind of sad dignity and easily beating Sellers' own three-role appearance in Dr Strangelove. For all the unpleasantness of the central character, this is a mesmerising film.

I thought of To Sir, with Love (Saturday, 10.20pm, ABC2) during the English street riots and had to remind myself that the year was 1967. Sidney Poitier plays a black teacher in London's East End, where he wins the respect of a class of violent, poorly educated, viciously rebellious youngsters. In the same year Poitier starred in another fine race relations drama, In the Heat of the Night (Saturday, 8.30pm, ABC2), playing a black detective working on a murder case in the deep south alongside a seasoned and resentful white colleague.

Disney's animated version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Sunday, 2.10pm, 7Two) gives us the voice of Demi Moore and a Quasimodo looking like a muscular version of Mr Magoo, the whole film being more reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast than Victor Hugo. The best thing about the songs is you hardly notice them, though I picked up one line worthy of Ira Gershwin at his most playful: "Adonis" is rhymed with "a croissant is". Too hard to explain.

BEST ON SHOW
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (M) 3-1/2 stars Thursday, 10.40pm, 7Two
In the Heat of the Night (M) 4 stars Saturday, 8.30pm, ABC2
To Sir, with Love (PG) 3-1/2 stars Saturday, 10.20pm, ABC2