wed 30/07/2025

tv

Catherine the Great, Sky Atlantic review - a glorious role for Helen Mirren only gets better

Tom Birchenough

“I want something Russian…” It’s with such a cry that Helen Mirren, bored by the bizarrely transgressive masked ball that comes at the close of the first episode of Catherine the Great, gets the dancing going: nothing from the imported fashions of Europe will do for her, and the music duly strikes up, a soupily romantic melody on violin, the quintessence, you might think, of mythic "Russianness”.

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The Capture, Episode 5, BBC One review - the man who knew too much

Adam Sweeting

Five episodes ago, BBC One's The Capture set off at a cracking pace with the apparent abduction and murder of barrister Hannah Roberts by army lance-corporal Shaun Emery.

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Snackmasters, Channel 4 review - superchefs take the clone-a-KitKat challenge

Adam Sweeting

The themes of food and cookery have already been boiled until the bottom of the saucepan melted, but TV commissioning editors can’t stop searching for new twists in the formula.

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World on Fire, BBC One review - more melodrama than drama

Adam Sweeting

For his new drama series for BBC One, writer Peter Bowker (The A Word, Monroe etc) has taken as his canvas no less than a panorama of Europe in 1939, just as World War Two is breaking out.

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My Life is Murder, Alibi review - whimsical tales of detection from Down Under

Adam Sweeting

Lucy Lawless achieved cult status in the Nineties fantasy classic Xena: Warrior Princess, and later became a regular in such disparate creations as Battlestar Galactica and Parks and Recreation. In My Life is Murder, she joins the ever-expanding ranks of TV ‘tecs as Melbourne-based investigator Alexa Crowe.

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Saving Lives at Sea, BBC Two review - derring-do on the ocean wave with the RNLI

Adam Sweeting

Learning support officer. Student. Chip shop owner. Mobile caterer. Gym owner. These were the day jobs of some of the volunteers featured in this week’s portfolio of tales on BBC Two from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who would all doubtless deny that they do anything heroic. For the people they rescue, they most certainly do.

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The $50m Art Swindle, BBC Two review - ramblin' gamblin' man comes home to roost

Adam Sweeting

“It’s nice to make money – lots of money,” said Michel Cohen, former high-flying New York art dealer turned debtor, jailbird and fugitive. He made oodles of the stuff and then lost it all, leaving a string of wealthy art collectors and galleries to lick their wounds over the colossal debts he never repaid.

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The Cameron Years, BBC One review - quite interesting but a bit boring

Adam Sweeting

David Cameron has been a recluse since the fateful days of June 2016 when the referendum on EU membership didn’t go quite the way he’d hoped. He’s probably been living through a private purgatory. “I think I will think about this forever,” he murmured to the camera in this first instalment of BBC One’s two-part doc.

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City on a Hill, Sky Atlantic review - power, corruption and larceny in 1990s Boston

Adam Sweeting

Connoisseurs of gnarly Boston-based crime sagas like The Town, The Departed and Black Mass will quickly find themselves at home in this sleaze-ridden new show, made by Showtime and brought to us by Sky Atlantic.

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Defending the Guilty, BBC Two review - trials and tribulations of a trainee barrister

Adam Sweeting

This new legal comedy is based on a well-received book by Alex McBride, but the transition from print to the BBC Two screen hasn’t been an unalloyed success.

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