The 15 best BBC iPlayer films you can watch in March 2026
One of the best superhero movies of all time is on BBC iPlayer now
BBC iPlayer isn’t just for catching up on TV: it has some of the best films available to stream right now.
That’s not to say you should have known better. Most people use iPlayer to watch shows they’ve missed or binge box sets before they’ve aired in full on normal telly, like Lord of the Flies.
When they’re done, they’ll pivot to some of the best shows on Netflix or rummage through Amazon Prime’s films.
Trust us: whether you’re into horror films, action, or comedies, there are amazing movies on BBC iPlayer.
The End We Start From
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2023 (on iPlayer from March 6)
- Cast: Jodie Comer, Katherine Waterston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong
- Director: Mahalia Belo
- Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
What it’s about: When an environmental crisis sees London submerged by flood waters, a young family is torn apart in the chaos.
Why to watch: The End We Start From is an especially haunting companion piece to 28 Years Later: an anxious, nightmarish movie about what happens when our world collapses… that also features Jodie Comer in a similarly towering performance.
The Damned United
- Genre: Drama, Sport
- Year: 2009
- Cast: Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney, Jim Broadbent
- Director: Tom Hooper
- Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes
What it’s about: When Don Revie quits Leeds to become the England boss, Brian Clough takes charge. Determined to impose his own style upon Revie’s tough-tackling team, Clough soon alienates his players and the board.
Why to watch: Why is it that the ‘beautiful game’ has such a shortage of good movies? Goal is uplifting, but riddled with clichés, and Mike Bassett: England Manager and Green Street are less about the sport itself. The Damned United is a rare exception: a taut, searing, and galvanising drama with a fantastic lead performance. You’ll love it.
Dark Waters
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 2019
- Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp
- Director: Todd Haynes
- Runtime: 2 hours 6 minutes
What it’s about: A tenacious attorney uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths to one of the world’s largest corporations. In the process, he risks everything – his future, his family, and his own life – to expose the truth.
Why to watch: If you’ve watched Dirty Business, Channel 4’s enraging drama about Britain’s water pollution scandal, then you need to see Dark Waters. It’s eerily similar: a shocking true story of how a corporation contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals.
Ghost Stories
- Genre: Horror
- Year: 2017
- Cast: Andy Nyman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther, Martin Freeman
- Director: Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
- Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
What it’s about: Professor Philip Goodman, famous for debunking hoaxes and ghost sightings, is given a dossier of three unsolvable cases by his hero… who’s been missing and presumed dead for years.
Why to watch: Creepy, amusing, and thoroughly well-crafted, Ghost Stories does what you’d expect from its title: give you the heebie-jeebies from a series of spooky tales that’ll make you glance twice at the dark corner of your room at night.
Malcolm X
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 1992
- Cast: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Delroy Lindo
- Director: Spike Lee
- Runtime: 3 hours 22 minutes
What it’s about: The story of Malcolm X, an influential and controversial black nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination.
Why to watch: Malcolm X could be the greatest biopic in all of cinema. It’s a movie that fundamentally understands, challenges, and enriches its subject, portrayed on an epic, bygone scale that only Spike Lee could come up with. Denzel Washington should have won the Oscar.
Queer
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 2024
- Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman
- Director: Luca Guadagnino
- Runtime: 2 hours 17 minutes
What it’s about: In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.
Why to watch: Queer, a surreal, psychedelic love story that’s as beautiful as it is crushing, won’t be a movie for everyone (particularly compared to Luca Guadagnino’s poppier Challengers). However, it boasts a tremendous performance from Daniel Craig, and you won’t forget it in a hurry.
Saltburn
- Genre: Thriller, Drama
- Year: 2023
- Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike
- Director: Emerald Fennell
- Runtime: 2 hours 11 minutes
What it’s about: Oliver, a quiet scholarship student at Oxford University, befriends his wealthy classmate Felix, who invites him (out of pity) to stay at his family’s sprawling estate for a summer that will change them both forever.
Why to watch: Saltburn is a gleefully debauched, grimmer twist on The Talented Mr Ripley for a new generation, with acerbic dialogue, bold performances (Barry Keoghan goes all out, if you know what we mean), and pulpy fun within its ostensibly elegant frame.
The Hunger Games movies
- Genre: Action
- Year: 2012 – 2015
- Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banls
- Director: Gary Ross, Francis Lawrence
- Runtime: 9 hours 8 minutes
What it’s about: Katniss volunteers to compete in The Hunger Games, a nationwide tournament that pits “tributes” from 12 districts against each other in a fight to the death.
Why to watch: The Hunger Games elevated a hit series of novels into one of the most popular and fandom-focused franchises in the world. That doesn’t happen off the back of a bad film, and the first remains a triumph of young adult moviemaking.
Not only that, but it spawned even better films; Catching Fire should be in the conversation as one of the best blockbusters of the 2010s.
It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Katniss, either: Jennifer Lawrence is to her what Sigourney Weaver is to Ripley.
Defiance
- Genre: Action, Thriller
- Year: 2008
- Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell
- Director: Edward Zwick
- Runtime: 2 hours 17 minutes
What it’s about: After three Jewish brothers escape Nazi-occupied Poland, they hide out in the forest of Belarus. They join the Russian resistance, and together, they train the local community to fight against the Nazis.
Why to watch: Defiance was a casualty of timing: in the same year, Quentin Tarantino made Inglourious Basterds, an admittedly better film about hunting Nazis.
Yet, this is one of Daniel Craig’s most underrated films; heart-racing, emotional, and action-packed, with an amazing true story behind it.
Priscilla
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Year: 2023
- Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi
- Director: Sofia Coppola
- Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes
What it’s about: When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected.
Why to watch: Austin Butler’s Elvis may have overshadowed Priscilla, but Elordi’s king of rock isn’t the star here. Spaeny’s performance as Priscilla is genuinely extraordinary; a sensitive, complex portrayal that runs the gamut of emotions. Without her, the film doesn’t work.
Fall
- Genre: Thriller
- Year: 2022
- Cast: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
- Director: Scott Mann
- Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes
What it’s about: A year after losing her boyfriend in a mountaineering accident, Becky joins her best friend to climb a 2,000ft TV broadcasting tower… and they get stuck at the top.
Why to watch: Fall can be corny, but those moments are a reprieve from its white-knuckle, barf-bag-flooding thrills. Seriously, it doesn’t matter if you’re unafraid of heights: this thing will make you feel vertigo. In this film’s case, hell is on top of the world, not below.
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead
- Genre: Drama, Comedy
- Year: 2018
- Cast: Neil Maskell, Sam Riley, Hayley Squires
- Director: Ben Wheatley
- Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
What it’s about: When Colin organises a lavish get-together at a country estate to celebrate New Year, plans go awry with the arrival of his estranged brother, David.
Why to watch: Happy New Year is an affirmation of Neil Maskell’s position as one of Britain’s sharpest and spikiest dramatic talents, always best utilised by Ben Wheatley. Unlike other holiday-set efforts, it never gives into the yuletide smiles and cheer; like a Bailey’s bottle filled with acid.
Starter for 10
- Genre: Comedy, Romance
- Year: 2006
- Cast: James McAvoy, Alice Eve, Rebecca Hall
- Director: Tom Vaughan
- Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes
What it’s about: A working-class teen in 1980s England arrives at Bristol University, keen to join its University Challenge team and win over a female classmate.
Why to watch: Starter for 10 is the perfect charity shop DVD. That may not sound like a compliment, but it’s a lovely, funny, unassuming rom-com you’ll be happy to watch over and over again.
Rye Lane
- Genre: Romance, Comedy
- Year: 2023
- Cast: David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah, Poppy Allen-Quarmby, Simon Manyonda
- Director: Raine Allen-Miller
- Runtime: 1 hour 22 minutes
What it’s about: Yas and Dom, two newly single twenty-somethings reeling from bad break-ups, have a chance encounter and end up spending an unusual day walking around South London.
Why to watch: Rye Lane is the best rom-com of the past 10 years; grin-inducing, achingly earnest, and wonderfully performed by two perfect leads. It’s indebted to the Before trilogy’s walk-and-talk format, but still feels original and vividly alive.
Aftersun
- Genre: Drama
- Year: 2022
- Cast: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio
- Director: Charlotte Wells
- Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes
What it’s about: At a fading vacation resort, 11-year-old Sophie treasures rare time together with her loving (but struggling) father, Calum.
Why to watch: “Masterpiece” is a word that’s thrown around willy-nilly, but Aftersun is truly deserving of that status.
This is a textured, tender, and painful drama that marries the glow of a memory with the nip of reality, and it boasts two pitch-perfect performances from Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio.
Watching it out of context isn’t advised, but its use of ‘Under Pressure’ may be the best movie scene of the decade to date.
Read more: The best movies of 2025 and how to watch them
