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Ripper Street, Series 4, BBC Two

Mark Sanderson Tuesday, 23 August 2016

H Division has a new home in Whitechapel that basks in the white heat of the technological revolution. The police station not only has a telephone but a “microreader” that allows the user to check thousands of miniaturised card indexes. Alas, a wry smile is all the viewer is likely to get from this opening episode of the fourth season. Nothing happens until the last ten minutes.

There's Something about Romcoms, Channel 4

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 21 August 2016

Ever since Britain shipped Cary Grant across the Atlantic, the romcom has been a transatlantic English-language staple. This spirited and hilarious – whether intentionally or not – examination of the last 30 years of the genre, dominated as it is by WASPs (yes, white Anglo-Saxon protestants) and the Anglophone world, looked at why we are so fulfilled by these contemporary fairy-tales, and offered some surprising insights.

Kate Humble: My Sheepdog & Me, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 16 August 2016

There is a grand ongoing project in Wales at the moment, the goal of which is to hunt for the deep ancestral DNA of the Welsh people. CymruDNAWales has already made some startling findings, in particular about a dozen all-powerful chieftains from 1500 years ago whose DNA is found in a large number of Welsh males. But enough about Welsh men and women. What about Welsh dogs?

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Preacher, Amazon Prime Video

Barney Harsent Friday, 12 August 2016

If you’re going to go toe-to-toe with Daredevil and Jessica Jones, the first two series in Netflix’s supremely realised and blood-spattered depiction of Marvel Comic’s Hell’s Kitchen, it’s as well to do it with conviction. By hosting Preacher, based on the comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Amazon went in swinging – low and hard, fighting dirty from the off.

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS!

Versailles, Series Finale, BBC Two

Mark Sanderson Thursday, 11 August 2016

So much has happened since the first of June when Versailles flounced on to our screens with its flowing locks and flashing cocks. The British people have voted to widen the Channel, the Conservatives have a new leader, Labour doesn’t have one and Christopher Biggins has been expelled from the Big Brother house. As Louis XIV might have said: plus ça change…

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Brexit: The Battle for Britain, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 09 August 2016

Did we really need to go through this all over again? The referendum campaign left roughly half the nation levitating on cloud nine, and roughly the other half feeling amputated. We all know what happened, but in this hour-long post-mortem Laura Kuenssberg went looking under rocks for extra titbits and morsels that could explain from the inside of the two campaigns how Britain voted for the trapdoor/sunlit upland marked Exit.

The Living and the Dead, Series Finale, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 03 August 2016

If Ashley Pharoah's superior chiller began with its 19th century protagonist, Nathan Appleby, trying to apply science and reason to seemingly irrational events, by the end of this sixth and final episode he had strayed way beyond the outer limits. Not only had the murky past of the Somerset village of Shepzoy reared up in numerous terrifying manifestations, but Nathan and his wife Charlotte were also receiving vivid and disturbing flashes into the future.

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The Girl from Ipanema: Brazil, Bossa Nova and the Beach, BBC Four

james Woodall Tuesday, 02 August 2016

Some years ago broadcaster Andy Kershaw introduced on BBC World Service radio a piece of Brazilian music with this blunt dismissal: “When I hear a track by, say, Gilberto Gil, I tell myself: ‘Right, time to take the lift and go to bed’.” It wasn’t a terribly joined-up complaint, but (in Kershaw-speak at least) it made sense.

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Masters of the Pacific Coast: The Tribes of the American Northwest, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey Friday, 29 July 2016

The American northwest is gorgeous: endless lakes, limitless ocean, mountains, forests, overwhelming blue skies in deepest summer, mists and of course rain, in one of the wettest places on earth – 4 metres of rain annually. Here were hundreds of islands too, archipelagos in a land almost infinitely rich in resources, from the Alaskan Panhandle and British Columbia south to Washington State.

Naked Attraction, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 26 July 2016

Remember Sex Box? Perhaps you were wisely watching paint dry that night instead. Sex Box was part of Channel 4’s ongoing commitment to making the nation’s toes curl in horror. It involved couples getting it eponymously on in the titular container, after which they emerged blinking into the studio lights to give a blow by blow account to Mariella Frostrup. As if that wasn’t barrel-scrapingly unBritish enough, here for your viewing pleasure is Naked Attraction.