sat 02/08/2025

tv

Watership Down, BBC One review - run rabbit run

Adam Sweeting

The author of the original Watership Down novel, Richard Adams, used to insist that it was “just a story about rabbits”, but its eco-friendly theme and warnings about the destruction of the natural environment were impossible to miss. In the 46 years since Adams wrote it, these concerns have become vastly more pressing, and his depiction of displaced rabbits wandering the earth in search of a new home could hardly be more topical.

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The Sound of Movie Musicals with Neil Brand, BBC Four review - genius of song and dance

Marina Vaizey

The movie musical: money making or true art – or both? This was a programme to sing along to, in the company of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard.

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The Long Song, BBC One, series finale review - a stirring adaptation

Jasper Rees

There was a ruthless logic to the scheduling of The Long Song (BBC One).

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Springsteen on Broadway, Netflix review - one-man band becomes one-man show

Adam Sweeting

When Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on New York’s West 48th Street in October last year it was only supposed to run for six weeks.

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The Good Place, E4 review - episode one trails clouds of glory

Markie Robson-Scott

Welcome to your first day in the afterlife! Everything is fine! Eleanor Shellstrop (a sparkling Kristen Bell) is dead, but hey, that’s cool, because she’s made it into the Good Place. Michael (the divine Ted Danson) is architect of this brightly coloured afterlife with its abnormally high ratio of frozen yoghurt parlours. “People love frozen yoghurt. I don’t know what to tell you,” sighs Michael.

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Mrs Wilson finale, BBC One review - stranger than fiction

Saskia Baron

As the priest said, "Understanding comes first, then forgiveness". Thus the rather enjoyable (if slightly overstretched) Mrs Wilson came to a not exactly happy, but certainly forgiving, ending. Ruth Wilson held the screen over three episodes of this period drama, playing her own real life grandmother Alison Wilson.

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Sir Cliff Richard: 60 Years in Public and in Private, ITV review - bachelor boy bounces back

Adam Sweeting

It was when he was on holiday at his agreeable estate in the Algarve in August 2014 that Cliff Richard got a phone call telling him his Berkshire home was being raided by the South Yorkshire Police.

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Care, BBC One review - a blunt but powerful polemic

Adam Sweeting

You wouldn’t turn to Jimmy McGovern for a drawing-room comedy, but there’s no doubting his gift for seizing big issues and turning into them raw, bleeding chunks of drama. You’re either for him or against him, but if you’re against him he’d love to grab you by the throat and shake you into seeing it his way.

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Barbra Streisand: Becoming an Icon 1942-1984, BBC Four review - the way she was

Adam Sweeting

Perhaps belatedly prompted by the release of Barbra Streisand’s new album Walls, the worst-selling disc in her 55 years with Columbia Records, this documentary was an uncritical celebration of Babs’s brilliant career from her first stage appearances in the late Fifties to the joys of Hello, Dolly!, The Way We...

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The Little Drummer Girl, BBC One, series finale review - Le Carré drama comes to the boil at last

Jasper Rees

Was The Little Drummer Girl commissioned by algorithm? Those who liked The Night Manager might reasonably have been supposed to enjoy another le Carré adaptation. The two dramas had DNA in common.

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