sun 17/08/2025

tv

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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Kidding, Sky Atlantic review - tears of a clown

Owen Richards

There’s no one right way to grieve. It cuts through everyone differently, whether reverting to childhood traits or out-of-character impulses. The person you lose might mean one thing to you, and something completely different to someone else; it can hit you both differently, and equally hard.

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Death and Nightingales, BBC Two, review - slow, lyrical, slightly dull

Jasper Rees

And now for something completely different from The Fall. The nerve-shredding drama from Northern Ireland was written by Allan Cubitt and featured, as its resident psychopathic hottie, Jamie Dornan (pictured below).

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Mrs Wilson, BBC One review - real-life secrets and lies

Adam Sweeting

In which the titular Mrs Wilson is played by her real-life granddaughter Ruth Wilson, in an intriguing tale of subterfuge both personal and professional. The curtain rose over suburban west London in the 1960s, where Alison Wilson was married to Alec (Iain Glen) and was the proud mother of their two sons.

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The Last Kingdom, Series 3, Netflix review - idylls of the king

Adam Sweeting

Destiny is all. The first two series of The Last Kingdom debuted on BBC Two, but for series three it has been fully embraced by Netflix.

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My Brilliant Friend, Sky Atlantic review - rich revelations of childhood

Tom Birchenough

This opening episode of My Brilliant Friend was a stunning symphony in grey.

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Louis Theroux's Altered States: Choosing Death, BBC Two review - profound and moving

Marina Vaizey

The toughest subject you can imagine: when, and how, would you choose death over life? This riveting film examined that excruciating dilemma within the legal frameworks on offer to some of the terminally ill in the United States.

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Our Classical Century, BBC Four review - enthusiasm and delight

Marina Vaizey

Jerusalem!

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They Shall Not Grow Old, BBC Two review - Peter Jackson's Great War finale

Saskia Baron

Peter Jackson has form when it comes to re-examining cinema history. In 1995 he made Forgotten Silver, a documentary about Colin McKenzie, a New Zealand filmmaker who not only made the first sound recordings but also invented the tracking shot and the close-up, and pioneered colour film, back in the 1910s long before his counterparts in America and France.

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