fri 25/07/2025

tv

Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?

Marina Vaizey

This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father can quite remember.

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A Christmas Carol, BBC One review – Dickens classic recast as gruelling horror story

Adam Sweeting

If you came to this expecting to be reminded of such ghosts of Scrooges past as Alastair Sim or Bill Murray, you will have been reaching either for the brandy or the defibrillator.

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Heston's Marvellous Menu: Back to the Noughties, BBC Two review - ghost of food trends past

Jill Chuah Masters

Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu.

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The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, BBC Two review - rehashed political history fails to set pulses racing

Adam Sweeting

All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think?

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Charles I: Killing a King, BBC Four review - sad stories of the death of kings

Adam Sweeting

This three-part series by historian Lisa Hilton is a follow-up to her previous effort from last July, Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four).

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Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar, Channel 5 review - a diverting melding of fact and fiction

Veronica Lee

Christmas and Agatha Christie are a very good fit – how better to spend time with your loved ones than sitting down to watch some murder and intrigue together?

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Traces, Alibi review - pedigree cast battles implausible plot

Adam Sweeting

Alibi is usually your one-stop shop for re-runs of Father Brown or Death in Paradise, so well done them for commissioning this new murder mystery.

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How They Built the Titanic, Channel 5 review - the great liner revisited again, but why now?

Adam Sweeting

The appalling fate of the allegedly unsinkable liner Titanic in 1912 has fuelled endless feature films and documentaries, not to mention a dismal drama series by Julian Fellowes (there was also a proposed Titanic II vessel which would have been built in China, but which remains mysteriously un-launched).

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Elizabeth Is Missing, BBC One review - a tender but tough-minded drama about ageing and loss

Jill Chuah Masters

In films, as in life, unreliable narrators are not hard to find. But there is something remarkable about the unreliable narrator of Elizabeth is Missing, BBC One’s newest feature-length drama. Its protagonist, Maud (Glenda Jackson), is unreliable in the extreme – confused, forgetful and emotionally wounded.

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Giri/Haji, Series Finale, BBC Two review - a thriller, but much more besides

Adam Sweeting

Happily, Joe Barton’s tinglingly original thriller (BBC Two) finished as smartly as it began, not by any humdrum tying-up of loose ends but by giving free rein to the story’s ambiguities and impossible choices. If indeed they really were choices.

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