THE UNCLE WHO WORKS FOR NINTENDO, PC, FREE

Remember those "choose your own adventure" children's books? This super-simple, free text-based game is like that – it gives you a few lines of the story, then you choose where you take it next by clicking on one of the options. You play from the perspective of a teenager visiting their friend, whose Nintendo-employee uncle drops in to visit mysteriously late at night. It starts out innocently enough – "Your best friend Sarah has invited you to a sleepover at her house this weekend!" You visit the kitchen, or the den and play games with your friend – but the plot becomes increasingly creepy as you go on, to one of a possible six endings depending on the path you chose. It's been a surprise hit, at least among gaming writers, who have loved it as a piece of nostalgia (apparently they all had a friend in childhood who claimed  to have an uncle who worked for a games company). But don't let the nerdy aspect put you off – it stands up for the tone of the writing (by Michael Lutz) and the atmosphere created by the minimal graphics and sound effects (best enjoyed with headphones). And what have you got to lose? It's free. Find it at correlatedcontents.com AH

DVD

MR THANK YOU, CRITERION/ECLIPSE (UNRATED)

As a Tokyo-bound bus winds around the steep hills of rural Japan, the smiling young driver (Ken Uehara) calls out thanks to all the foot travellers who step  off the road: teams of workers, family groups, and others surviving any way they can in a country still rocked by the Depression. Shot on location and almost free of plot, Hiroshi Shimizu's 1936 adaptation of a short story by Yasunari Kawabata suggests at moments that Japanese society, like the bus, might be skirting an abyss. But the sorrowful implications are treated with the utmost lightness – a jaunty score accompanying the mostly comic squabbles between the bus passengers, intercut with views of the untroubled landscape as it flies by. JW

PAY TV

PRISONERS WIVES, Wednesdays, BBC First, 8.30pm

Not to be confused with the American Real Mob Wives reality franchise, of which there is reportedly a Melbourne version in the making, this British take on the prison-drama genre is as harrowing as it is compelling. The four-episode second and final season retains only two wives from the first: Francesca Miller (Polly Walker, Mr Selfridge), the wife of an underworld boss; and Harriet Allison (Pippa Haywood, Scott & Bailey), the nervous mother of a young inmate. New to the bittersweet routine of visiting time are Aisling O'Connor (Karla Crome, Under the Dome), whose petty-crim father is threatening to ruin her posh wedding by his notable absence; and Kim Haines (Sally Carman, Shameless), a soccer mum whose middle-class life is shattered when her husband is accused of abusing a neighbour's child. Tears, laughter, moving displays of loyalty and a Tarantino-style shooting mark the return episode, which promises a rollercoaster ride. BM

FREE-TO-AIR

BERLIN WALL: THE NIGHT THE IRON CURTAIN CLOSED, Sunday November 9, SBS One, 8.30pm

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, this documentary special tells the events of the lead-up to the wall going up in 1961 - literally overnight.

A mix of archival footage, dramatic re-enactments and interviews with both Eats and West Berlin citizens, most of the focus here is on the immediate lead-up to the Wall. Although planned of sometime, just handful of people know of "Operation Rose", a plan so perfectly pre parted that overnight 40,000 military and civilians were mobiles to use 28 miles of barbed wire to seal the border between east and west, under cover of darkness.

Just one Western journalist, Adam Kellet-Long, witness the historical moment, and his first-hand account of the morning Berlin awoke to find the border permanently closed, as well as interviews with regular citizens and former military, is a fascinating insight into the story of what would become the starkest symbol of the Cold War. KN

DVD

HEATHERS, (Umbrella) M

Michael Lehmann's 1988 high school satire retains its shock value, making vicious fun of a clutch of topics – bullying, eating disorders, teen suicide – that seem more sensitive than ever today. Winona Ryder is the angst-ridden heroine, emo before the term was coined, whose urge to purge the planet of a clique of mean girls is put into practice by her brooding new boyfriend (Christian Slater, doing his best Jack Nicholson drawl). Not too coherent as narrative, the film has a pop-surrealist vibe unique to the late '80s, characterised by wide-angle lenses, floaty synths, and the kind of impossibly edgy dialogue (courtesy of first-time screenwriter Daniel Waters) that suggests that the characters are under a spell forcing them to blurt out their most secret, obscene thoughts. JW