Trailers promoting forthcoming BBC programmes are traditionally controversial, as are promotional films extolling the virtues of the corporation. The biggest single complaint on viewer feedback shows is that some programmes are so enthusiastically previewed that the audience eventually tunes in with a sense of deja vu. Others object on ideological grounds: if the BBC's charter excuses it from carrying adverts for commercial products made by other people, how can it so relentlessly huckster its own?

Few pieces of between-programme filler, though, have been as pointed and potentially contentious as one broadcast to viewers waiting for Tuesday night's That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC2. A blizzard of clips of famous actors – Michael Sheen in The Damned United, Emma Thompson in An Education – was cut together at a rate of faces only generally seen in the opening moments of the Bafta film awards.

This compilation was advertising the specific achievements of BBC Films. Under various headings (Names You Know, Those You Don't – Yet, Award-Winning Writing) the super-trailer praised the efforts of public service TV in bringing movies to the public.

The timing was explosive: only the day before, the government had announced the closure of the UK Film Council, the body that invests lottery money in cinema projects, and which had co-produced many of the films included in the BBC's self-congratulatory package.

Perhaps this celebration of the BBC's cinematic clout was always intended to run on that day, at that time. In the context of the recent killing of a major source of revenue for small or quirky British films, it felt aimed at culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has warned in interviews that the corporation should be ready for cuts in its funding.

In fact, the message to Hunt seemed clear: any move against the BBC would be a strike not just on television but a second hit on cinema. Seen in this light, what could have been just another boring promotional trailer had the import of a campaign commercial.