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Downton Abbey, ITV: Alien vs. Dowager

Marianka Swain Monday, 19 October 2015

It's been the most heavily signposted illness in drama history. A twinge here. An "Oof" there. Chekhov's roiling guts. And tonight, His Lordship's mystery complaint finally took centre stage, in a scene that led one to wonder exactly how to remove three pints of aristocratic blood from a pristine white tablecloth.

China: Treasures of the Jade Empire, Channel 4

Marina Vaizey Monday, 19 October 2015

Here comes the President, and with him a timely reminder about what the Chinese have been digging up over the past 40 years or so to further demonstrate their exceptional imperial history over the past two millennia.

The South Bank Show: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sky Arts

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 15 October 2015

It’s huge, it’s just huge, said Benedict Cumberbatch, struggling to express the scale of the challenge that playing Hamlet presents.

The Apprentice, Series 11, BBC One

Veronica Lee Thursday, 15 October 2015

Where do they find them? The candidates for each new series of The Apprentice, that is. It's not as if they don't know the score by now - humiliation, first in the boardroom by Lord Sugar and his clunking putdowns, and then on nationwide television. But it makes good telly, so hoorah for series 11, with 18 more numpties vying for Sugar's £250,000 investment in their business plan.

River, BBC One

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Crime drama is a bit like the wheel. There’s only so much scope for reinvention. People try to come up with novelties all the time, then you turn on the telly and realise everyone else has had the same idea. Rumpled cops in macs, ex-cops haunted by the past, cops with overbearing bosses descended from Jane Tennison – they’re all out there, all the time. Even the casting department is running on empty.

Homeland, Series 5, Channel 4

Adam Sweeting Monday, 12 October 2015

Stunningly reinvented in series four, Homeland sustained the momentum with this tense and menacing fifth season opener. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has now quit the CIA for a new job in Berlin, where she's working as head of security for billionaire philanthropist Otto Düring (Sebastian Koch). The past, however, is not giving up without a fight.

Return to Larkinland, BBC Four

Tom Birchenough Monday, 12 October 2015

Return to Larkinland was the second of AN Wilson’s intimate portraits of poets, following his similar excursion to “Betjemanland” last year.

Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death, BBC Two

Matthew Wright Sunday, 11 October 2015

The tragic love of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath is probably Britain’s most notorious 20th-century relationship. While other controversies – for example, those of Wallace Simpson, John Profumo and Princess Diana – have been laid to rest, Hughes and Plath are still generating headlines more than 50 years after Plath’s suicide in 1963.

Comment

Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie, BBC Four

Barney Harsent Saturday, 10 October 2015

If there was any doubt as to the musical preferences of BBC4's commissioning arm, consider this: the whole history of funk got an hour. Meanwhile, indie music – a niche, artistic movement that somehow ended up drinking champagne while wallowing in its own mess by the mid-Nineties – gets a three-part series. Just thought I’d mention it.

Comment

Unforgotten, ITV

Jasper Rees Friday, 09 October 2015

The rule doesn’t always hold good, but in a television drama a fairly reliable kitemark of quality is when the opening credits list the cast and you’ve heard of them. The title sequence of Unforgotten promised Trevor Eve, Nicola Walker, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Tom Courtenay, Gemma Jones, Ruth Sheen, Peter Egan, Hannah Gordon, Bernard Hill, Cherie Lunghi and Tom Cobbleigh. OK not Uncle Tom, but you get the picture.