King Of The Hill (World, 9.30pm) is set in St Louis in 1933, a city where the Depression has brought most people to their knees.
When Aaron Kurlander's immigrant father loses his travelling salesman job, it is only a matter of time before the money runs out. The family is already reduced to living in a seedy hotel, and as the film begins, it is apparent how near it is to losing even that security.
Aaron does his best to contribute to the family coffers, by embarking on a disastrous canary breeding campaign, but collapse is inevitable.
Jesse Bradford is outstanding as Aaron, a bright, hard-working, affectionate son and brother who bears his father's cruelty (typically classy performance from Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbe) with stoicism: he knows the man is desperate.
He also bears the knowledge that his mother is ill: she spends the first half of the film on a sofa coughing up blood, and the second half waving at her children through a distant window in a sanatorium.
Aaron ends up alone and broke in the hotel, forced to spin the most extraordinary lies to convince his teacher he is coping, and into eating magazine pictures of full-course meals to assuage his appetite.
Director Stephen Soderbergh chooses to shoot everything in a golden, dusty light which softens what would otherwise be a fairly bleak story.
