mon 08/09/2025

tv

The Dambusters, Channel 5 review - yet another telling of the Bouncing Bomb story

Adam Sweeting

The story of the raid on dams in Germany's Ruhr Valley by the RAF’s 617 Squadron in May 1943 has become a subject of perennial fascination as well as a potent national myth.

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The Undoing, Series Finale, Sky Atlantic review - bluff and double-bluff as the truth is revealed

Adam Sweeting

Throughout its preceding five episodes, The Undoing (Sky Atlantic) has skilfully, if a little shamelessly, kept the fickle finger of suspicion in perpetual motion.

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Small Axe: Red, White and Blue, BBC One review - sobering real-life story of police officer Leroy Logan

Adam Sweeting

The third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet (BBC One) took for its subject the real-life story of Leroy Logan, the Islington-born son of Jamaican parents who joined the Metropolitan Police in the early Eighties.

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What a Carve Up!, Barn Theatre online review – ingenious whodunnit

aleks Sierz

Classical murder mysteries end with a neat solution — and with the arrest of the perpetrator. Postmodern murder mysteries play games with the genre, turning it upside down and inside out. This film adaptation of What a Carve Up!, Jonathan Coe’s 1994 bestselling novel, is a postmodern crime story — and then some.

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Arena - Fela Kuti: Father of Afrobeat, BBC Two review - the music that never dies

Tim Cumming

There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and the 1982 classic, Music is the Weapon. In his afterlife, the legendary Fela Kuti and his music feels more alive than ever.

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The Good Lord Bird, Sky Atlantic review - picaresque account of the myth of John Brown

Adam Sweeting

On the face of it, this new Sky Atlantic series sounded as though it might be a grave and sombre slice of American history, telling the story of the anti-slavery crusader John Brown and how his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia helped push America into the Civil War.

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Offended by Irvine Welsh, Sky Arts review - are we seeing the end of free speech?

Adam Sweeting

Do we have a right not be offended? It's a question that’s growing bigger and uglier, thanks to the censorious “cancel culture” which has become such a disfiguring aspect of social media.

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Small Axe: Mangrove, BBC One review - explosive start to five films about racial injustice

Demetrios Matheou

With the Black Lives Matter movement spurred this year by another wave of police brutality against African Americans, Steve McQueen’s blisteringly powerful, viscerally topical drama reminds us of the UK’s own torrid r

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The Crown, Season 4, Netflix review - royalty rocked by personal and political turbulence

Adam Sweeting

Pre-release excitement about the fourth coming of The Crown (Netflix) has centred on Emma Corrin’s portrayal of Princess Diana, still big box-office 23 years after her death.

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David Crosby: Remember My Name, Sky Arts review - a rock icon looks in the mirror

Liz Thomson

Rock documentaries are so often disappointing, the result less a portrait than a whitewash.

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