mon 28/07/2025

tv

Love in the Countryside, BBC Two review - reaping a harvest of marital bliss?

Adam Sweeting

If you’re a farmer who works round the clock to feed sheep, milk cows and so forth, how on earth do you make time to find a partner and reap a harvest of marital bliss?

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Temple, Sky 1 review - down in the tube station at midnight

Adam Sweeting

At first, the opening episode of Sky 1’s enticing new drama Temple looked like it was going to be mostly concerned with a heist gone wrong.

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Suicidal: In Our Own Words, Channel 5 review - why are so many men killing themselves?

Adam Sweeting

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day, and Channel 5 marked the occasion with this sobering documentary. Focusing on male suicide – incredibly, now the UK’s biggest killer of men under 45 – it studied six patients at the Riverside Mental Health Centre in Hillingdon, west London.

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Spotlight on The Troubles: A Secret History, BBC Four review - Ulster's bitter sectarian war revisited

Adam Sweeting

“The Troubles” is a polite euphemism for the ferocious storm of sectarian violence and political chaos which convulsed Northern Ireland for 30 years, before being brought to a close by 1998’s Good Friday Agreement.

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The Capture, BBC One review - gripping drama about the surveillance society

Veronica Lee

Ben Chanan's The Capture (BBC One), which he wrote and directed, is a bang-up-to-the-minute dystopian thriller about the increasingly surveilled society we live in.

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High Society: Cannabis Café, Channel 4 review - pointless investigation into drug-taking

Veronica Lee

This was the first of a two-part investigation into... well, I don't know what. The voiceover of High Society: Cannabis Café said it was an experiment “to test the alleged benefits of weed” and the people featured all had “a personal motivation for getting stoned” as they visited an Amsterdam coffee shop, where dope is sold legally.

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Sink or Swim, Channel 4 review - the Channel awaits for these celebrities

Veronica Lee

Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history. And if it involves a little sob followed by a group hug, bonus!

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The Affair series 5, Sky Atlantic review - a new cast member adds intrigue

Veronica Lee

There was a time when a new series of The Affair (Sky Atlantic) would cause the heart to quicken; now, not so much. Actually that sounds like the course of most extramarital affairs – an initial rush to spend time with the object of your affection, only for the desire to dwindle over time.

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Prince Albert: A Victorian Hero Revealed, Channel 4 review - dramatic documentary filled with intelligent detail

Rachel Halliburton

It may sound perverse to say it, but Albert was the perfect twenty-first century prince. Thrust into the heart of the British monarchy he was simultaneously an oppressed outsider who – despite his reputation as the most handsome prince in Europe (not least when wearing white cashmere pantaloons) – struggled to make his voice and intelligence heard.  

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Bauhaus 100, BBC Four review - a well-made film about the makers

Sebastian Scotney

The Bauhaus school and its subsequent influence make an extraordinary story, and this film by Mat Whitecross, which has assembled a whole range of different voices and perspectives and woven them together, told it well.

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