TV drama
Markie Robson-Scott
“I get to see all these beautiful places and look passengers right in the eye and say the word trash.” Meet Cassie Bowden (the excellent Kaley Cuoco), flight attendant on Imperial Atlantic Airways. In firm denial about her alcohol problem, she knocks back myriads of vodka miniatures onboard, parties hard in cities the world over, has one-night stands after black-out benders (“Thank you for the effort. Good job,” she says to one man, unclear as to who he is or what he’s doing in bed in her New York apartment) but still makes the JFK to Bangkok flight by the skin of her teeth, looking fresh as Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Jed Mercurio’s tangly police corruption thriller Line of Duty has become one of the jewels in the BBC’s drama crown, and this sixth (and possibly last) series has finally arrived on BBC One after a steadily growing crescendo of pre-publicity. Can it live up to the hype?Experience teaches that trying to judge a series by the opening episode is often a fool’s errand, and the wily Mercurio knows his game intricately. Was episode one brilliant? Possibly, though not necessarily – but it was crammed with clues, feints, intimations of doubt and a variety of threats and warnings, as if to soften up Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Readers of John Marrs’s 2017 novel The One should probably look away now, since Netflix’s dramatisation of the story bears scant resemblance to the book. The basic premise – that a corporation has invented a method of DNA testing which can match individuals with their perfect partner who “you are genetically guaranteed to fall in love with”– remains, along with a group of characters who experience the repercussions of this techno-dating app, but their identities and storylines have all been reinvented for the TV incarnation.By and large, this is not a good thing. The One has a chilly Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There comes a time when every successful formula can do with an overhaul, and that particular bell may be tolling for Unforgotten (ITV). Regular viewers will be familiar with writer Chris Lang’s modus operandi – a corpse (usually grotesque and of indeterminate age) is discovered, and before you can say “autopsy” cold case experts Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and Sunny Khan (Sajeev Bhaskar) are poking around in the innards. Then they track down a network of potential suspects who were connected with the deceased.This latest case adheres to the blueprint with unswerving exactitude, though it’s Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Joerg and Anna Winger’s gripping drama of East Germany, a loose portrait set over the final decade of that country’s existence, has reached its culmination, and this first episode of Deutschland 89 landed us right in the unpredictable maelstrom of history. Following on from Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86, the thriller and espionage elements of those two predecessors have been folded with true aplomb into the real-life events that reached their unforeseen conclusion with crowds of East Germans breaking through the Berlin Wall – or the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”, as it’s occasionally Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Admittedly, Antarctic explorer Captain Scott was at the other end of the earth from the protagonists of The Terror (BBC Two), but they would surely have concurred with his anguished observation: “Great God! This is an awful place.” Based on Dan Simmons’s novel, The Terror is a fictionalised account of the 1845 attempt by Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean. This ended in disaster when his Royal Navy ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus became stuck in pack ice, with the crews subsequently dying slowly of disease and starvation.A Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Nice to find Bryan Cranston taking the lead in a TV series again (this is his first since Breaking Bad ended in 2013), and the role of New Orleans judge Michael Desiato fits him like a well-tailored suit. Our first glimpses of him at work in his courtroom guide us succinctly to the conclusion that this is a decent man with a conscience, since he has taken the trouble to personally visit the home of a woman accused of drug-dealing, and what he saw has persuaded him that the police officer delivering evidence against her is telling a pack of lies.A judge prepared to risk antagonising the local Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Belfast-based thriller Bloodlands comes from the pen of first-time TV writer Chris Brandon, though he may find some of his thunder being stolen by the show’s producer, Line of Duty supremo Jed Mercurio. Line of Duty is filmed in Belfast too, though it doesn’t advertise the fact on screen. Bloodlands, on the other hand, is steeped in its northern Irish locations both rural and urban, as it unravels a dark and twisty tale of the legacy of the Troubles and how the past has an ugly habit of coming back to poison the present.Ballymena’s own James Nesbitt stars as DCI Tom Brannick, a widower with a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Based on a book by Roberto Saviano, author of the Neapolitan gang saga Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero (Sky Atlantic) is an account of the international drugs trade and the way its tentacles wrap themselves around the entrails of societies at all levels. It’s a lavishly-mounted and beautifully photographed production with the feel of a big-budget movie like Sicario or Traffic, knitting together storylines in Mexico, New Orleans and Calabria in south-west Italy.It’s also a story riddled with sadistic violence and torture and may not be everyone’s idea of escapist lockdown viewing, but it exerts a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Sad to report, this fourth series of Call My Agent! (Netflix) will be the final outing for this caustically addictive saga of actors and their agents. The show’s unique trademark has been its success in attracting an impressive roster of A-list French actors and getting them to behave in outlandish and ridiculous ways, but maybe they’re just running out of suitably recognisable names.Episode 5 of this new batch shows what could have been a possible way ahead by reaching across the Atlantic to pluck Sigourney Weaver (pictured below) out of La-La Land and plonk her in the fabulously expensive Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The oeuvre of M Night Shyamalan has tended to veer between unsettling creepiness and sometimes hilarious misfires, but, working as Executive Producer with screenwriter Tony Basgallop, he’s hit the spot with this unnerving series for Apple TV +. Just back for its second season, Servant homes in on the fraught and freaky lives of Sean and Dorothy Turner. He’s a so-called “consulting chef”, she’s a high-profile news journalist on Philadelphia’s 8 News TV network, and there’s a huge smouldering crater where their home life used to be.Apart from the pair of them being self-obsessed narcissists, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Or, What The Durrells Did Next. Writer Simon Nye, writer/director Roger Goldby and star Keeley Hawes are all veterans of ITV’s Corfu-based fantasy, and while Finding Alice superficially resembles a thriller, like its predecessor it’s more of an undemanding family melodrama once you’ve peeled away the wrapping.Nonetheless, this opening episode (of six) radiated a distinctly whodunnit-ish aura. Our story began (after a brief flash-forward) with Alice Dillon (Keeley), daughter Charlotte (Isabella Papas) and Alice’s partner Harry (Jason Merrells) visiting the brand new house that property Read more ...