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Storyville: Coach Zoran and His African Tigers, BBC Four

Jasper Rees Friday, 28 February 2014

Hassan Ismail Konyi is not the first young man to see football as a meal ticket. The twist is that he has rather more dependents riding on his dream that most. Hassan has 26 sisters and 35 brothers. He comes from South Sudan, the youngest country on earth and one of the more benighted. But a young man can dream, and his dreams are given fuel by his national coach.

Silk, Series 3, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 25 February 2014

In between the second series of Silk and this new one, Peter Moffat took time out to write his rural-misery-and-cannon-fodder dirge, The Village. Having off-roaded so far from his usual track, perhaps it's no wonder that his return to the world of wigs, hypocrisy and legal sophistry felt a fraction off the pace.

Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry, BBC Four

Fisun Güner Monday, 24 February 2014

Is Brutalism brutal? Pugnacious? Uncouth? The name was coined by English academic and architecture writer Reynor Banham – more on him in a moment – as a play on the French béton brut (literally raw concrete) and the English “brute”, and hence was probably doomed from the start. Who, after all, can love an architectural style that sounds like it’s got all the grace of a troglodyte doing a plié before punching you in the face?

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The Edwardian Grand Designer, Channel 4

Tom Birchenough Monday, 24 February 2014

Britain’s last castle, Drogo, may be only just over a century old, but repair work is going on in a big way – it’s currently the National Trust’s largest-scale restoration project.

True Detective, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 23 February 2014

You could boil down the content of this new HBO import to an info-bite that reads "two detectives hunt serial killer in Louisiana", but that wouldn't give you the faintest inkling of the pace, mood or texture of what's shaping up as a remarkable chunk of television. You may find it a little slow, and the Deep South accents sometimes cry out for explanatory surtitles, but you're liable to find it seeping into your consciousness like a troubling dream you can't shake off.

The Brits Who Built the Modern World, BBC Four / The Man Who Fought the Planners, BBC Four

Tom Birchenough Friday, 21 February 2014

There really was astonishing talent on display in The Brits Who Built the Modern World (*****), as full a television panorama of the work of the five architects whose careers were under examination – Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, Michael Hopkins and Terry Farrell – as we’re ever likely to get.

The Smoke, Sky1

Adam Sweeting Friday, 21 February 2014

A new series about a team of London firefighters? Probably a bit like Casualty meets The Bill, with added smoke and cats stuck in trees. But no - writer Lucy Kirkwood (of Skins fame) has created a raw chunk of contemporary drama which isn't afraid to rip up a few preconceptions.

My Mad Fat Diary, Series 2, E4

Lisa-Marie Ferla Tuesday, 18 February 2014

By the end of its first series, My Mad Fat Diary had departed far enough from memoirist Rae Earl’s frank, funny source material that the adaptation taking on a life of its own shouldn’t have been a cause for concern. Still, there’s always that niggle when something that got it so completely right first time around returns: can it possibly repeat that magic, or live up to expectations?

BAFTAs 2014: Hollywood winners made in Britain

Emma Simmonds Monday, 17 February 2014

Long before the stars had begun walking (and working) the red carpet, this year's British Academy Film Awards were a hot topic. Unfortunately it was for all the wrong reasons. A whistleblower writing for the Daily Mail alleged that many of the Academy's 6,500 members make little effort to consider the full gauntlet of options, often voting for the big-budget American favourites sight unseen.

Line of Duty, Series 2, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Thursday, 13 February 2014

Crikey. Line of Duty was pumping dangerous levels of octane first time round. For this new series we’re in for an overdose. After one hour the body count is racking up: 3 coppers (shot), 1 witness under protection (burned to a crisp), AN Other (defenestrated). Plus that lovely soft Keeley Hawes has been waterboarded in the lav and has assaulted a noisy neighbour with a wine bottle.