Jason Reitman directs Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott and Cory Michael Smith and Tim Fehlbaum directs Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Leonie Benesch in this pair of historical behind-the-scenes recreations of Seventies TV live broadcasts that were ground breaking.

Claustrophobia. Ticking clocks. Looming deadlines. Murphy’s Law. If there was an unrecognised movie sub genre that has been kicking about since the late 50s it would be The Pressure Cooker. Ordinary people trying to achieve extraordinary goals while everything around the becomes an obstacle. Sidney Lumet was the pioneer of the form with everything from 12 Angry Men through Fail Safe to Dog Day Afternoon. Recently the Safdies’ have popularised the tropes with Good Time and Uncut Gems. Or maybe Birdman? Or Captain Phillips? Or the Charlie Work episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia… The camera stalks, the walls close in, and for every ingenious, improvised solution there is a Chekov’s gun waiting to go off at the worst possible time.

Two films have been released in the U.K. within a space of a week which seem to ride this growing trend and set in the same milieu; live television. Saturday Night aims for “real time”-ish comedy drama. Cramming all the legends, tall tales and bad behaviour into the 90 minutes before the first SNL sketch was put on air. It is a race against the clock, a clash of egos and a watershed moment. Very much a lionisation of what Lorne Michael’s achieved with very little backing from the NBC suits. This era of US comedy is my hot sauce and the casting is really keyed in, especially the lad they get to play Chevy Chase. The female performers are a still sidelined but the always welcome Rachel Sennott is given a pumped up writer’s role. I had high hopes for this and, a little inevitable mawk aside, Reitman did the business even if it never quite blew me away.

Far more effective is the comparatively dry apolitical drama of September 5. Sure any film about Palestinian militants killing Israeli athletes is going to be an ethical hot potato to juggle. Fehlbaum’s talky ensemble film walks the line tightly by focussing on the analogue solutions to reporting this knife edge situation to the world. 16mm film is raced across police lines, phone lines are soldered to microphone wires, ID cards forged and time on the sole satellite has to be bartered for in hourly shifts. All by a sports broadcasting team with minimal hard news experience. You get a true sense of modern reporting coming together in the lunges of inspiration and desperation. I was completely gripped. Was that day truly the first time a TV channel ident was used?

7/8