tue 12/08/2025

tv

Grace, ITV review - sun, sea and skulduggery in sunny Brighton

Adam Sweeting

We last saw John Simm on ITV in 2018’s Hong Kong-based murder mystery Strangers, a product from the Jack and Harry Williams script factory which wasted its exotic backdrops with a plot which mooched about in a dispirited fashion before dozing off entirely.

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Unforgotten, Series 4, ITV review - is the familiar formula wearing thin?

Adam Sweeting

There comes a time when every successful formula can do with an overhaul, and that particular bell may be tolling for Unforgotten (ITV).

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Deutschland 89, Channel 4 review - the Wall comes down, what next?

Tom Birchenough

Joerg and Anna Winger’s gripping drama of East Germany, a loose portrait set over the final decade of that country’s existence, has reached its culmination, and this first episode of Deutschland 89 landed us right in the unpredictable maelstrom of history.

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The Terror, BBC Two review - nightmare in the Arctic wastes

Adam Sweeting

Admittedly, Antarctic explorer Captain Scott was at the other end of the earth from the protagonists of The Terror (BBC Two), but they would surely have concurred with his anguished observation: “Great God! This is an awful place.” Based on Dan Simmons’s novel, The Terror is a fictionalised account of the 1845 attempt by Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean.

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Your Honor, Sky Atlantic review - Bryan Cranston suffers fear and loathing in New Orleans

Adam Sweeting

Nice to find Bryan Cranston taking the lead in a TV series again (this is his first since Breaking Bad ended in 2013), and the role of New Orleans judge Michael Desiato fits him like a well-tailored suit.

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Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry, Apple TV+ review - sprawling account of the singer's rise to superstardom

Adam Sweeting

The Billie Eilish story is a paradigm of pop music and marketing, 2020s-style. Eilish’s instinctive talent became evident when she was barely into her teens, and she flourished with the support of a close-knit and musical family.

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Stand Up and Deliver, Channel 4 review - how to make a comic

Veronica Lee

Everyone (well, almost everyone) can tell a joke. But being a comic – holding an audience rapt, getting a roomful of strangers to like you and laugh at your material – takes real talent.

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Bloodlands, BBC One review - ghosts of the Troubles return to poison the present

Adam Sweeting

Belfast-based thriller Bloodlands comes from the pen of first-time TV writer Chris Brandon, though he may find some of his thunder being stolen by the show’s producer, Line of Duty supremo Jed Mercurio. Line of Duty is filmed in Belfast too, though it doesn’t advertise the fact on screen.

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Whirlybird: Live Above LA - Storyville, BBC Four review - rise and fall of the first couple of airborne TV news

Adam Sweeting

A story of obsession, media madness and the price of fame, as well as a filmic incarnation of Jim Morrison’s “bloody red sun of fantastic LA”, Matt Yoka’s film Whirlybird is a strange and fascinating hybrid.

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ZeroZeroZero, Sky Atlantic review - how drug money makes the world go round

Adam Sweeting

Based on a book by Roberto Saviano, author of the Neapolitan gang saga Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero (Sky Atlantic) is an account of the international drugs trade and the way its tentacles wrap themselves around the...

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