The BBC's Summer of British Film must rank among the corporation's finest initiatives of recent years. BBC2's Saturday night series surveying our cinematic past has, so far, been lively and informative, and the minor gems that have been unearthed for rare screenings have been a delight. It's also good to see that a number of classic features have been digitally restored for theatrical reissue. With so much dross emanating from Hollywood, the revival has become a key component of the UK release schedule and anyone who has not seen either Henry V (1944) or Billy Liar (1963) on a big screen is urged to do so.

Laurence Olivier had become convinced that Shakespeare belonged firmly on the stage during his participation in Paul Czinner's 1936 adaptation of As You Like It. However, having played Henry V on the radio in 1942, he had been persuaded of the patriotic potential of a film version by producer Filippo Del Giudice. So, when William Wyler, Carol Reed and Terence Young all declined his invitation, Olivier agreed to direct as well as star in the film, although the debutant wisely secured the services of editor Reginald Beck as his assistant. He also hired theatre critic Alan Dent to help him tailor the play and called on numerous stage pals to take supporting roles. But he was denied the services of his wife, Vivien Leigh (as Katherine), as Hollywood producer David O.Selznick (who held her contract) felt the role was too small for a star of her magnitude.

The story should be well enough known. Distancing himself from Falstaff (George Robey), the companion of his dissolute youth, Henry (Olivier) leads his troops to victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415 and seeks to consolidate his imperial position by courting the Princess Katherine (Renee Asherson).

The ingenious framing device, which commenced the action on the stage of the Globe Theatre in Shakespearean London, set the tone for the film's blend of artifice and actuality, which was consciously designed to capture the imagination of audiences who had probably never seen the Bard before. Paul Sheriff and Carmen Dillon's theatrical sets and painted backdrops exploited the atmospheric luminosity of Robert Krasker's Technicolor photography, while also making the outdoor Agincourt sequences (filmed in Enniskerry with Irish soldiers) seem all the more expansive and thrilling. However, such perfectionism pushed the budget up to £475,000 (a staggering sum for a wartime project) and J.Arthur Rank had to step in to keep the production afloat.

However, it proved to be an enormous commercial success and remains one of the most striking colour features in British screen history. Driven by William Walton's rousing score, Henry V was also a transatlantic triumph and earned Olivier a special Oscar in 1946. Despite occasionally indulging its star's tendency to melodramatise, it has lost little of its power or panache and makes for a fascinating comparison with Kenneth Branagh's 1989 version.

Billy Liar may also be more familiar to some through a later incarnation, as ITV sponsored a sitcom starring Jeff Rawle as undertaker's assistant and inveterate fabulist Billy Fisher in the 1970s. But nothing can top John Schlesinger's 1963 adaptation. Reunited from the previous year's A Kind of Loving, Schlesinger and screenwriters Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall managed to bridge the gap between the 'grim 'oop North' miserabilism of British social realism and the modish swagger of the Swinging Sixties with this masterly reworking of Waterhouse's wonderful novel.

Giving a performance that skulks shiftlessly between temerity and timidity, callousness and innocence, daydreaming and deceit, Tom Courtenay dominates the picture, whether defrauding his employers, disappointing his family or duping his trio of girlfriends. Courtenay's reveries in the imaginary country of Ambrosia (that provides his escape from reality) are also hilarious and far better than the figments to which Danny Kaye succumbed in Norman Z.McLeod's 1947 take on James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. But the most memorable moment remains the sight of Julie Christie on the train to London watching Courtenay shrugging on the platform and settling for the mediocrity he despises, yet probably deserves.