ITV
Adam Sweeting
“Everybody lies," says property developer Tony to his PA and secret lover Natalie. “Even your mum probably.” And of course he’s not wrong.Sarah Williams’s drama, showing over four consecutive nights on ITV, is an easy-to-digest and deftly-wrought piece of work, using an unspecified accident which has left somebody in hospital – Williams has bent over backwards to avoid revealing the victim’s identity until the final episode – to prise open the secrets and lies of Vivien (Francesca Annis) and her family. Vivien, who's turning 70, has been living on the Sussex coast for the past 40 years, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's the smallest lies that can bring you down. When he is asked by a detective how he got on with his family, who have just been murdered in a mass shooting at their Essex farm, Jeremy Bamber (Freddie Fox) says: “Really well. We were friends.” A quizzical look briefly scutters across the face of his cousin Ann Eaton (Gemma Whelan) who overhears. As this six-part series unfolds, we will see that it was pointless mistruths like that that would help bring about Bamber's eventual undoing.It was one of many subtle moments of doubt dropped into ITV's White House Farm, which tells the story of how Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was on 16 July 1969 that Apollo 11 lifted off from Florida en route for the Moon, and exactly 50 years later, as we nervously anticipate the dawn of commercial flights into space, the event resonates louder than ever. Here, Professor Brian Cox called it “the greatest achievement in the history of civilisation.” According to veteran broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald, it was “the most magnificent thing that ever happened.”The TV networks have been saturating us in moon-shot memorabilia, and in the cinema we’ve had Todd Douglas Miller’s imposing feature-length documentary Apollo 11, but this Read more ...
Tom Baily
Should the Ritz catch up with modernity? This question is posed and immediately answered with another question: Does it need to? Not really, say the staff, clients and celebrity guests that populate this bubbly, formulaic and unashamed celebration of what is, rightly, a gorgeous and historic venue. Sticking tight to tradition and celebrating it – with the help of some very famous talking heads – is what is on offer in ITV's latest show. But viewers in search of history, intrigue, scandal, or an insight that slides even an inch beneath surface description will not find it in this overtly Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ecological awareness has become de rigueur for any self-respecting celebrity, and if the chances of saving the planet were in direct proportion to the number of renowned personages criss-crossing it on well-intentioned missions, we could all stop worrying. Still, one would much prefer to have Dame Judi Dench doing it than…. others we might mention.Having adopted a trio of orangutans in Borneo, Dame Judi ventured to the Malay Archipelago to immerse herself in the island’s astonishing array of wildlife and vegetation and see the animals in their natural habitat. But you can’t just drop an 84- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It has become routine to accuse Brexiteers of wanting to bring back the British Empire (though obviously it's OK to run an empire from Brussels), but the charge might more accurately be levelled at ITV. They’ve brought the ratings rolling in with their saga of the early years of Queen Victoria, and Beecham House, set in late-18th century India, is being touted in some quarters as “The New Downton”, itself a relict of Edwardian pomp and ceremony.Though I must admit, Beecham House doesn’t look much like Downton Abbey to me. True, it’s full of spectacular palaces peopled with wealthy potentates Read more ...
Tom Baily
All is not well in Boston, Lincolnshire. Unemployment, immigration concerns, Brexit frustration, and the highest murder rate in the country. How do you solve the problems of contemporary Britain? Send in an American. And not just that. Bill Hixon (Rob Lowe) is the best: educated to Doctorate level, with the accolade of being America’s top Metropolitan police chief three years running. But Bill is also impatient, and lacks some basic people skills (not to mention he can’t grasp British irony and sarcasm). He’s also brought his teenage daughter Kelsey (Aloreia Spencer) with him. We gather that Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first film in this extraordinary series, Seven Up!, was made for Granada Television’s World in Action in 1964. It picked 14 seven-year-old British children from different social backgrounds, aiming to revisit them every seven years to see how their lives were progressing. Paul Almond directed the first programme, but ever since this has been Michael Apted’s baby.The slow, methodical progress of the series down the decades has meant that it has steadily accumulated a strange power, as these lives of others have in some ways become merged with our own. Those original seven-year-olds are now Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Have we passed peak Hatton Garden? It’s now four years since a gang of old lags pulled off the biggest heist of them all. They penetrated a basement next door to a safe-deposit company, drilled through the wall, and made off with many millions quids’ worth in diamonds, cash and the like. All but one of them ended up in prison, where they will probably see out their days, being all of them well past pensionable age.Owing to the age of the criminals, the story had immense appeal to that section of the British film industry that rushes to glamorise London gangsters. The burglary triggered a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the past, Bear Grylls has taken President Obama up an Alaskan glacier and trekked through the Swiss Alps with Roger Federer. This jaunt with David Walliams (ITV) was on a more modest scale, merely requiring the Britain’s Got Talent judge to be dragged across rivers and down rock faces in wildest Devon.Grylls believes that everybody has a little bit of Bear in them, if they can just screw up their courage and face their worst fears. By the end of this, Bear and Walliams also had a little bit of rat in them, after Bear had barbecued a dead one for lunch. Walliams, togged up in comically Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Are brothers Harry and Jack Williams mounting a takeover bid for British TV? They’ve written (among other dramas) The Missing, Liar and Baptiste, and they produced Fleabag. However, judging by their co-writing efforts on The Widow (ITV) they’re spreading themselves thin.The final two episodes saw the tension mount as the mysteries unravelled, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for the basic flaws which had made it creak and wobble from the start. It was as if the Williamses had patched it together from a random assortment of press clippings about African corruption, rapacious capitalism and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
ITV has an enviable knack for creating populist historical costume dramas which never seem to wear out, despite a million rotations on ITV3. Once everybody had got over the shock of a young and glamorous Queen Victoria, who had previously existed in the popular imagination as a scowling dowager in a coal sack, Victoria proceeded to take its place in the ITV pantheon with an air of unswerving confidence.The third series dawned with a whiff of gunpowder in the air. It’s 1848, and revolutionary zeal is sweeping across Europe. No royal family is safe, and France’s King Louis Philippe – Read more ...