TV
Helen Hawkins
To a camp bluesy theme tune performed by what sounds like a yowling cat (actually the song’s co-writer, Mick Jagger), this prestige production from Apple TV+ opens up the world of the “slow horses”, the disgraced spies who are the anti-heroes of Mick Herron’s bestselling spy novels. These sad cases work out their penance to the Service in an outpost near Barbican station called Slough House, hence their nickname, whipped along by their boss, Jackson Lamb, a man of digestive instability and sadistic bent who resents every minute he has to spend with them in spy Siberia, and lets them know Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first series of Bridgerton (Netflix) became a ratings-blasting sensation because of the way it thrust a boldly multiracial cast into the midst of a Regency costume drama, and because of the camera-hogging presence of Regé-Jean Page as the swashbuckling Duke of Hastings. Above all, it had countless astonishingly graphic sex scenes.In season two, there’s no Duke of Hastings and shockingly little sex, so many original viewers may find themselves feeling that they’re getting noticeably less bang (if you will) for their buck. This time around, the action centres on Viscount Anthony Bridgerton Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Two years ago, the fourth season of The Last Kingdom (Netflix) found the Saxon saga not quite hitting peak form, possibly reeling from the fallout of the haunting death of King Alfred (David Dawson). Happily, any doubts are blown away with the arrival of 5, in which the show’s trademarks of knotty dynastic rivalry, anguished romantic entanglements and horrifying eruptions of bloodthirstiness are all roaring ahead at full blast. Sadly, they say this series will be the last, though a feature film may be in the works.Some things have changed (we are now without Ian Hart’s stalwart Beocca, Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The terrain Holding occupies is well travelled, but this new ITV four-part drama travels over it really well. The landmarks are familiar: a quiet rural community, a cop with an unhealthy lifestyle and a secret sorrow, a feud between rival lovers of the local lothario, a long-buried trauma that’s suddenly unearthed. We could be in any rural location in the primetime drama of the past half-century.But as soon as elderly Mrs Meany (Brenda Fricker, pictured below) comes into shot on her mobility scooter, riding into town like a lone gunslinger with a perm, it’s clear this drama will be having its Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Netflix’s fly-on-the-pitwall series has rapidly established itself as a vital ingredient in the tapestry of Formula One coverage, and is credited with giving the sport a huge boost in visibility and popularity, not least in the USA. This fourth outing (now featuring even more undeleted expletives than ever) takes a look back at 2021’s dramatic racing season, which ended in uproar and controversy in Abu Dhabi last December.The headline event of the year was the increasingly bitter struggle between Mercedes and Red Bull, as they battled to win the driver’s and constructors’ titles. Max Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Tragically, Shane Warne’s sudden death at age 52 means that Amazon’s new documentary about him has suddenly become an obituary as much as a celebration.Directed by John Carey, David Alrich and Jackie Munro, Shane does a solid job of tracing Warne’s ascent to cricketing glory, with contributions from an array of friends, teammates and family members. Best of all, there’s plenty of input from the man himself, since the ebullient Warne was never at a loss for words either on or off the pitch.As much as anything, his story was a powerful demonstration of mind over matter. Initially, he would have Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Sidney J Furie’s 1965 film The Ipcress File is a much-loved benchmark of its period. Stylish, sinister, witty and depicting a determinedly un-swinging London, it was conceived as the flipside to the absurdly glamorous James Bond movies and pulled it off with panache. It also had Michael Caine playing the lead role of Harry Palmer, and a superb John Barry soundtrack famously featuring that mysterious instrument, the cimbalom.Turning the same story into a TV series nearly 60 years later was not a job for the faint-hearted, but, remarkably, screenwriter John Hodge and director James Watkins have Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I’ve killed so many people. I don’t want to do it any more, any of it.” So said Villanelle (Jodie Comer) to Eve (Sandra Oh) in the last episode of the third series of Killing Eve, soon after she’d pushed Rhian Bevan, an assassin hired by the Twelve, under a train. Yeah, right, you may have thought, yawning cynically.But lo! Series four, the final one, with new showrunner Laura Neal at the helm, proves us wrong, at least initially. Villanelle has joined a Christian church, calls herself Nelle, has moved in with the vicar, Phil (a splendidly deadpan Steve Oram), and his daughter, May (Zindzi Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They say this will be the final series of Peaky Blinders (BBC One) and its documenting of the tumultuous progress of the Shelby family, though creator Steven Knight promises there’s a feature film in the works. This opening episode kicked it off in style – perhaps a little too much style, since the show is now so self-consciously art-directed and signposted with iconic images that it’s difficult to find much human warmth within. Scenes are shot in portentous slow motion and overlaid with the sounds of super-amplified heavy breathing, while interiors are shot and lit like sets from grand opera Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Suddenly bogus-identity stories are all the rage. Netflix has been scoring big with Inventing Anna, the story of fake heiress Anna Delvey, as well as the The Tinder Swindler, a cautionary tale about a high-rolling conman who scams money from women he meets online.Meanwhile the BBC has brought us Chloe, screenwriter Alice Seabright’s drama about a woman who cloaks herself in a new identity to investigate the death of her childhood friend. Once again, Chloe is about the obsessional allure of the web. It all begins with Becky Green (Erin Doherty) poring over the seemingly gilded life of Chloe Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Con artists in film or TV need to be clever, charming, mysterious or at least entertaining (for instance Leo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can or Michelle Dockery in the much-underrated Good Behaviour). Bafflingly, Anna Delvey, the notorious fake heiress whose story has been fictionalised by Shonda Rhimes’s Shondaland company in Inventing Anna (Netflix), is none of these things.Between 2013 and 2017, Delvey bilked, scammed and fleeced hundreds of thousands of dollars from an array of wealthy New Yorkers and financial institutions. Her real name was Anna Sorokin, the daughter of a fairly Read more ...
David Nice
Painful more often than funny, this is not This Is Going To Hurt, the laugh-one-moment-rage-the-next book by obstetrician turned comedian Adam Kay. He’s written the script so essential truths remain. But the on-screen Adam Kay, national treasure Ben Whishaw – how happy Kay must have been about that – does relatively few lines to camera and what was essentially a diary has been shaped into a seven-part drama.It just about manages to balance horrors with human warmth and springs a few shocks even on those who’ve read the book or seen Kay’s show.An apparent bombshell was dropped recently by Read more ...