fri 25/07/2025

tv

Comedy Against Living Miserably, Dave review - standups tread the boards for CALM charity

Adam Sweeting

This was the third collaboration between Dave and the mental health charity CALM (Comedy Against Living Miserably), hosted at EartH in Dalston by Joel Dommett.

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Putin: A Russian Spy Story, Channel 4 review - inside the mind of a man without a face

Tom Birchenough

Director Nick Green’s new three-parter follows on the heels of his A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad and comparisons are sure to be made between his two subjects.

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Slipknot Unmasked: All Out Life, BBC iPlayer – masked metalheads reveal all

Guy Oddy

There aren’t many metal bands like Slipknot. For a start, the nine-piece line-up consists of the standard vocalist, two guitars, bass and drums – but then there are also two percussionists, sampler and decks. Their music is consistently ferocious, with a hardcore, high-speed, ragging thump and semi-comprehensible lyrics that leaves no room for chart-friendly power ballads.

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The English Game, Netflix review - it's the toffs versus the workers in this version of sporting history

Adam Sweeting

Julian Fellowes admits he knows little about football and has always hated sport in general, but this hasn’t prevented him from writing a TV series (for Netflix) about football’s 19th century origins.

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Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story, BBC Two review - disruptive political maverick eludes pigeonholing

Marina Vaizey

This patchwork of interviews and comments from male journalists and politicians interspersed with clips from television news and films, from The Godfather to The Avengers, was a zig-zag narrative of Dominic Cummings’s unique career as a political strategist.

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Feel Good, Channel 4 and Netflix review - a fresh, bingeable comedy that digs deep but feels mild

Jill Chuah Masters

“I am not intense.” That declaration arrives early in Feel Good, the new Channel 4 and Netflix romantic comedy fronted by comedian Mae Martin, who plays a fictionalised version of herself. Over Mae’s shoulder, we see a literal trash fire. She’s lit up the evidence of a past drug addiction.

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The Art Mysteries, BBC Four review - secrets and symbols of Van Gogh's famous self-portrait

Adam Sweeting

Presenter Waldemar Januszczak suffers from something very like Robert Peston Syndrome, which makes him bellow at the camera and distort words as if they’re chewing gum he’s peeling off the sole of his shoe. Nonetheless he has a knack for finding fresh and revealing angles on art history, as he aims to do in this new series.

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Penance, Channel 5 review - lust, disgust and mistrust in Kate O'Riordan's thrilller

Adam Sweeting

Adapted by Kate O’Riordan from her own novel, Penance is a taut little thriller spread over three consecutive nights.

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Sunnyside, Sky Comedy review - the immigrant experience and the American dream

Markie Robson-Scott

The multi-talented Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar, Designated Survivor, House) took a two-year acting sabbatical in 2009 to work for the Obama administration.

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Belgravia, ITV review - when the toffs and the nouveaux riches collided

Adam Sweeting

The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are inevitably calling it the “new Downton”, but it really isn’t.

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