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The Heart of Country – How Nashville Became Music City USA, BBC Four

Matthew Wright Saturday, 08 November 2014

It’s supposed to represent everything simple and homely, for a white audience at least, its tales of God, family and heartbreak the stuff of everyday America. For British listeners, more at home with “Parklife’s” dirty pigeons and cups of tea than Dolly Parton or Johnny Cash, the cultural background needs more sketching in, and BBC Four had its work cut out telling the story of a city, and a music both so familiar and so exotic.

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Life Story, BBC One

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 06 November 2014

David Attenborough’s characteristically soothing narration again described the unceasing struggle for survival in the animal world. In astonishing films from all over the world, we witnessed an enormous variety of tactics for finding homes that not only provided shelter, but protection. In nature, he told us, good homes are all too rare, and we were treated to some not-so-subtle allusions to our own housing crises.

Broadmoor, ITV

Jasper Rees Thursday, 06 November 2014

Broadmoor is not a prison. It just looks like one, as reiterated by umpteen craning shots which prowled around the Victorian red-brick exterior, assessing its brute institutional heft from every angle. For the first time, and after five years of negotiation, cameras have been allowed to document what happens inside this mythologised sanctum. Is it really the chamber of horrors of popular imagination? Is this where society’s malignantly insane are locked away for our better safety?

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Great Continental Railway Journeys, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 06 November 2014

How odd to recall that Michael Portillo was the Thatcherite brat they loved to hate, the man whose 1997 defeat at Enfield Southgate would have caused a Twitter meltdown had the 140-character phenomenon been invented in time. Today's repackaged Portillo has blossomed in all directions, from being a stalwart on The Moral Maze and Andrew Neil's This Week to documentaries about capital punishment and mental health.

The Passing Bells, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 04 November 2014

We seem to have spent most of 2014 examining the social, political, historical, geographical and military ramifications of the First World War. You would have thought, therefore, that the upcoming Remembrance Sunday commemorations could have been allowed to stand alone, uncluttered by further efforts to explain or dramatise the events of 1914.

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The Missing, BBC One

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Given the long shadow cast by the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, it’s sort of surprising that no drama department has commissioned something like The Missing before. It’s not the same story of course. The child alluded to in the title is a five-year-old boy, not a three-year-old girl, and he’s abducted in France rather than Portugal. But it’s impossible not to be aware of the story’s factual parallel.

Imagine... The Art That Hitler Hated, BBC One

Marina Vaizey Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Alan Yentob’s culture programme, Imagine, returned for its autumn season with a two-part examination of one of the most potently disturbing episodes in the history of art, let alone culture. Even before the programme’s title, masterpieces by such as Kirchner, Beckmann and Klimt flashed before our eyes.

Intruders, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 28 October 2014

"Baffling paranormal thriller" is your drive-thru soundbite to describe Intruders, but despite a lingering threat of genre-cliché, it holds your attention with a very capable cast and some stylish cinematography. The action is set in Washington State and Oregon in the American Northwest (though it was apparently shot over the border in British Columbia), and the chilly, metallic light has a distinctly Scandinavian air.

The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour, BBC Four

Florence Hallett Monday, 27 October 2014

Andrew Graham-Dixon’s villainous alter ego got a second airing tonight in his exploration of 19th-century Britain’s love of all things Gothic. Last week we saw him hanging about in decaying graveyards, or appearing, wraithlike in a dank corner of a Gothic ruin, while ravens circled portentously overhead (main picture).

Grayson Perry: Who Are You?, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Thursday, 23 October 2014

The night before he was locked up, Chris Huhne had that Grayson Perry round for tuna steaks. Who knew? Perry was embarking on a series of portraits about identity at a crossroads, and can there be a more public crisis of identity than a Cabinet minister going to prison? But first Perry wanted to get to know his subject. Huhne was resistant to probing.