High Hopes (Bravo Sunday at 11:30 p.m.)...

High Hopes (Bravo Sunday at 11:30 p.m.) Margaret Thatcher’s desperately becalmed Britain is the setting for Mike Leigh’s savage-sweet 1988 comedy, ranging deftly from lethally funny character assassination to moments so quietly charming that its wit is almost subliminal.

Sister, Sister (KTTV Wednesday at 3 a.m.) Directed by John Berry, this is a 1982 TV movie written by Maya Angelou and starring Diahann Carroll, Rosalind Cash and Irene Cara as volatile siblings. Not Angelou at her best, but the superior cast makes the film worth seeing.

Strapless (HBO Friday at 2 a.m.) David Hare’s intelligent, engrossing--and largely overlooked--1989 British film stars Blair Brown as an American long working in London who finds her ordered life unexpectedly shaken. Intensifying matters is the arrival of her hoydenish, much younger sister (Bridget Fonda); terrific performances from Brown, Fonda and also Bruno Ganz.

The Great Ziegfeld (TMC Friday at 7:30 a.m.) Glossy 1936 MGM biography of the legendary showman, played by William Powell and featuring production numbers more elaborate than any proscenium could hope to contain; an Oscar for Luise Rainer as Ziegfeld’s ill-fated first wife.