wed 16/07/2025

tv

Unequal Opportunities, BBC Two

Fisun Güner John Humphrys asks what can be done when 'rich thick kids do better than poor clever kids'

There’s an equality gap in our education system. Poor kids come bottom of the class, while rich kids are destined for the elite universities. In the eloquent words of education minister Michael Gove: “Rich thick kids do better than poor clever kids.” And we’ve got loads of stats to back this up.

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Spooks, BBC One

Adam Sweeting

Looks like being a chilly autumn in Spooks world. In time-honoured fashion, the new series waved goodbye to another former stalwart with the funeral of Ros Myers (Hermione Norris), blown to bits in the last series and thus freed up to splash about in the moral squalor of ITV1's new Bouquet of Barbed Wire.

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Joe Maddison's War, ITV1

Jasper Rees The last cast: Robson Green, Kevin Whately and Derek Jacobi in Alan Plater's 'Joe Maddison's War'

Alan Plater wrote to the end. When he died earlier this year, he had completed a final screenplay which found him returning whence he came. Joe Maddison’s War was set in his native North-East, and portrayed the impact of wartime on ordinary working-class lives. With the help of nostalgic singing and dancing, the tone was comic and affectionate, but with an undimmed glint of good old socialist indignation. They don’t make dramas like this any more. But whenever they do, the more...

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The Special Relationship, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting

The double act between screenwriter Peter Morgan and his favoured leading man Michael Sheen has given us some of the most teasingly enjoyable dramas of recent years, but how much genuine insight they've given us into Tony Blair or New Labour remains a moot point.

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Spitfire Women, BBC Four

Veronica Lee

“It was the best part of my life,” said one silver-haired lady in ringing tones, while another described it as “poetry” and a third as “the aeroplane and you were one”. What these doughty octogenarians were describing in this gem of a film was flying Spitfires during the Second World War.

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Herb Alpert, Tijuana Brass and Other Delights, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Trumpeter, businessman and artist Herb Alpert in his easy-listening heyday

I used to have a childhood fascination with the music of Herb Alpert, because I liked the tunes and always felt there was a hint of melancholy behind Herb’s breezy, nonchalant exterior. Everybody else found Alpert laughably cheesy, but happily, this excellent documentary proved that I was right all along by building a watertight case for regarding him as something of a neglected legend.

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The Road to Coronation Street, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Formidable women: Tony Warren (David Dawson) and female company from 'The Road to Coronation Street'

A drama about Britain’s (and by the time Coronation Street reaches its 50th birthday in December, the world’s) longest-running soap starts with a huge advantage - its producers could just quote lumps of the brilliant original scripts, written by Corrie’s creator, Tony Warren, and be done with it. But Daran Little, himself a former writer on the show, resisted that urge (well, mostly) when penning The Road to Coronation Street, an affectionate and witty prequel that...

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Dark Blue, Five USA

Adam Sweeting The tension mounts for Lieutenant Carter Shaw (Dylan McDermott) in Jerry Bruckheimer's latest law enforcement epic

Jerry Bruckheimer’s production stable has already given us a lifetime’s supply of law-enforcement stories. The hydra-headed CSI franchise has become more ubiquitous than I Love Lucy in its heyday, while Cold Case and the FBI missing-persons yarns of Without a Trace are probably showing on a set near you whether you’re in Saigon or Santiago. Now here’s Jerry’s latest brainchild, Dark Blue, the saga of a crew of undercover Los Angeles cops led by...

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First Light, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Reach for the sky: Sam Heughan as Geoffrey Wellum prepares to intercept Battle of Britain cliches

How do you rescue a drama about Spitfire pilots from over half a century of cliché and pastiche, from Kenneth More in Reach for the Sky to Armstrong and Miller’s street-talking RAF officers? After all, put an actor in a flying jacket and a cravat, get him to smoke a pipe and read the paper as he awaits the call to scramble, and you’ve got a 24-carat stereotype. The answer, as the wholly admirable First Light illustrates, is to go back to basics – to find the authentic details...

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The Trouble with the Pope, Channel 4

David Nice

"The church shouldn't be interfering in the personal and private lives of people - we don't own them." The comment comes from a Catholic priest working with abused children in the Philippines, Father Shay Cullen. It would be good to hear from other men or women of God rather more liberal than Pope Benedict XVI, for whose visit to Britain later this week this programme sounds no trumpets.

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