sat 26/07/2025

tv

Thatcher: A Very British Revolution, BBC Two review - demolishing the boys' club

Marina Vaizey

Is there some tongue-in-cheek irony in BBC Two starting a five-part biographical documentary on Margaret Thatcher this Monday?

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Gentleman Jack, BBC One review - the revolutionary life of Anne Lister

Adam Sweeting

In 2010, Maxine Peake starred in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, but this new dramatisation of Lister’s life has been gestating in Sally Wainwright’s brain for 20 years, and finally arrives under the auspices of the BBC and HBO.

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Cannes 2019: Too Old to Die Young - nightmarish LA noir

Joseph Walsh

This year, Cannes has been adamantly defending traditional cinema, with more than a few jibes at Netflix (who remain persona non grata at the festival), but that hasn’t stopped them screening two episodes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s new Amazon TV series, Too Old To Die Young.

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What We Do In the Shadows, BBC Two review - black comedy vampire spin-off from cult movie

Saskia Baron

This is a toothsome treat for Sunday nights and one of those rare occasions when the BBC has got hold of the kind of nifty comedy series that Netflix usually pumps out. What We Do in the Shadows started out as a New Zealand vampire flick in 2014.

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David Harewood: Psychosis and Me, BBC Two review - actor confronts his painful past

Saskia Baron

In the week that the Jeremy Kyle show has been yanked permanently off air after the death of one of its vulnerable guests, the timing couldn’t have been better for the BBC to show how sensitively the old-school broadcaster handles contributors with mental health problems.

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Mum, BBC Two, series 3 review - welcome last hurrah for adult family sitcom

Jasper Rees

It is a cliché that never grows old. From Fawlty Towers via The Office all the way through to (so we are told) Fleabag, a great half-hour comedy that bows out after two series cements its place in the pantheon by ensuring posterity wants more. Twelve episodes seems to be the platonic ideal of the perfectly proportioned sitcom.

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The Virtues, Channel 4 review - close and personal with stunning Stephen Graham

Tom Baily

The Virtues (Channel 4) sees director Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, This Is England) reunite with actor Stephen Graham in what is certainly their most raw and emotionally bruising project to date.

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Years and Years, BBC One review - ambitious but amorphous

Adam Sweeting

As the double-edged Chinese proverb has it, “may you live in interesting times.” Screenwriter Russell T Davies evidently thanks that’s exactly where we’re at, and his new six-part drama Years and Years (BBC One) is a bold, sprawling but – as far as episode one is concerned at least – amorphous attempt to assess the...

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Bear's Mission with David Walliams, ITV review - celebs go wild in the country

Adam Sweeting

In the past, Bear Grylls has taken President Obama up an Alaskan glacier and trekked through the Swiss Alps with Roger Federer.

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Deep State, Series 2, Fox review - covert conspiracies in Africa

Adam Sweeting

Last year’s first season of Deep State featured cloak and dagger exploitations of chaos in the Middle East by the capitalist West and its intelligence services.

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