sat 17/05/2025

tv

This Way Up, Channel 4 review - hilarity with a dark undercurrent

Markie Robson-Scott

“Get those worksheets in by Monday or I will Brexit the lot of you,” says turbo-charged teacher Aine (Aisling Bea: The Fall, Gap Year) to her London TEFL class. Her students have just enjoyed a stimulating lesson built around the Kardashian family tree. “Kim is the…” Aine waits for the answer. “Yes, well done, the second eldest. And Khloé is the…yes, the middle one. She was the youngest until along came Kendall and Kylie.”

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I Am Hannah, Channel 4 review - last in trilogy leaves us dangling

Adam Sweeting

In the final instalment of Dominic Savage’s trilogy of stand-alone dramas for Channel 4, Gemma Chan took the title role of a single woman in her mid-thirties, struggling with awkward choices about motherhood,...

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Euphoria, Sky Atlantic review - teenage nervous breakdown

Adam Sweeting

Being a teenager used to be fun, allegedly, but for the young cast of HBO’s controversial new hit series Euphoria it looks more like a nightmare ride through a theme park of bad trips.

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Inside the Secret World of Incels, BBC One review - involuntary celibacy, violence and despair

Markie Robson-Scott

A sad story of lonely men, Simon Rawles's atmospheric and beautifully shot documentary has no narration, apart from the occasional faint, off-camera question from the interviewer. This makes everything more depressing. We’re alone on a nightmare ride, starting with Catfishman. “I catfish females.

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The Chef's Brigade, BBC Two review - you're in the army now

Adam Sweeting

While a spot of home cooking can be a relaxing experience with a nice meal at the end of it, signing up to this culinary campaign with Michelin-starred mega-chef Jason Atherton is like being sent off to join the Foreign Legion.

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Manifest, Sky 1 review - late arrival causes cosmic upheaval

Adam Sweeting

It’s been nearly a decade since the sixth and final series of Lost, JJ Abrams’s baffling odyssey of time-travelling air crash survivors, but judging by Manifest, its influence still hovers over TV-land.

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Who Do You Think You Are? - Naomie Harris, BBC One review - shocks old and new

Veronica Lee

This episode of the celebrity genealogy show began with footage of Naomie Harris at Ian Fleming's former home in Jamaica, where she was helping launch Bond 25 (to be released next year), in which she is playing Moneypenny for the third time.

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Cindy Sherman: #untitled, BBC Four review - portrait of an enigma

Tom Baily

Cindy Sherman predicted the selfie, so goes the claim. From our current standpoint, it is all too easy to analyse her many hundreds of photographic self-portraits made since the late 1970s as cultural forebears of the digital medium.

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Keeping Faith, Series 2, BBC One review - family misfortunes

Adam Sweeting

It was a year ago that BBC One scored a smash hit with the first series of Keeping Faith, but as series two opens 18 months have passed since Faith Howells’s husband Evan (Bradley Freegard) disappeared and triggered a traumatic chain reaction of events.

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I Am Nicola, Channel 4 review - not really love, actually

Adam Sweeting

It’s a bold idea by director Dominic Savage, to create three improvised dramas for Channel 4 depicting women confronting different forms of crisis. To make it work he needed brave and powerful performers, and this first one starred Vicky McClure (the remaining two will feature Samantha Morton and Gemma Chan).

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