tue 14/05/2024

tv

Succession, Season Four, Sky Atlantic review - powerful beginning for the endgame

Helen Hawkins

How much more is there left to be said about the excellence of Succession? It’s back for a final season, and devotees will pore over every detail, every conversational ploy from robust to downright crude, every chess move on this volatile board. As they should, because nothing comparable has appeared on television.

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Great Expectations, BBC One review - modernised, muddied and muddled

Helen Hawkins

There’s no point in being upset with the writer Steven Knight for doing what he usually does; even so, many viewers will find what he has done with Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations far too Peaky for their tastes. 

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Endeavour: The Final Episode, ITV1 review - the final bow for Oxford's finest

Adam Sweeting

Endeavour first landed way back in 2012, and suddenly here we are, bidding it a final farewell after the end of its ninth series. Not everybody learned to love Shaun Evans as the pre-John Thaw Inspector Morse, but some of us may even have come to like the new boy better.

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MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, Netflix review - a field day for conspiracy theorists

Adam Sweeting

For fans of conspiracy theories, this three-part examination of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is irresistible, though the continuing anguish of friends and relatives of the 239 people aboard the flight makes for some painful viewing. 

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The Great British Bake Off Musical, Noel Coward Theatre review - blue-chip cast lift daft confection

Helen Hawkins

If you are hoping for some harmless fun at The Great British Bake Off Musical, probably with a few dodgy jokes about soggy bottoms mixed in, you won’t be disappointed. But what you might not expect is that the show will liberally ladle on the innuendo and is so filthy at times that it’s like being at an adult panto. The audience on opening night certainly seemed a primed one, aahing when a contestant was sent home, booing when one resorted to sabotage. 

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Daisy Jones & The 6, Amazon Prime review - hit rock'n'roll novel doesn't make great TV

Adam Sweeting

Based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six is the rags-to-riches-to-wreckage story of the titular Seventies rock band, supposedly somewhat based on Fleetwood Mac.

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Liaison, Apple TV+ review - tangly Franglais thriller presses some hot buttons

Adam Sweeting

Vive l’entente cordiale! “Despite Brexit” (as the BBC likes to say), Apple TV+ has successfully bridged the Channel to create this lurid Anglo-French thriller, in which Euro-skulduggery rubs shoulders with bribery, corruption and high treason.

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Fleishman Is in Trouble, Disney+ review - mid-life crises in Manhattan

Helen Hawkins

As films and television series based in New York City tend to do, Fleishman Is in Trouble opens with an aerial shot of Manhattan – except, significantly, this sequence is presented upside down.

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Drive to Survive, Season 5, Netflix review - fly-on-the wall F1 show may need a reboot

Adam Sweeting

The backstage revelations about the politics and personalities that fuel Formula One have made Drive to Survive one of Netflix’s most reliable bestsellers, but on this fifth outing there’s a lurking sense that the novelty is wearing off.

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The Gold, BBC One review - gripping dramatisation of the 1983 Brink's-Mat bullion robbery

Adam Sweeting

The raid on the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at Heathrow in November 1983 has entered the folklore of British crime and criminology. The gang of six armed robbers had expected to find £3m in cash, but instead got away with £26m worth of gold bullion. The story of what happened to the loot, the thieves and their associates remains at least partially swathed in mystery to this day.

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