sun 17/08/2025

tv

Gomorrah, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - there will be blood

Adam Sweeting

No doubt McMafia has its strengths, but it’s like a mug of Horlicks compared to the grappa-with-aviation-fuel blast of Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic). The Naples-set organised crime drama takes no prisoners. It gives no quarter, and expects none.

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Strike Back, Series 6 part 2, Sky 1 review - shoot first, talk later

Adam Sweeting

After a mysterious mid-season break which seemed to catch everyone by surprise, Strike Back’s sixth season belatedly bounces noisily back. So far the story has ricocheted around the Middle East before detouring to Hungary, where our indestructible Section 20 operatives just managed to save “Mac” McAllister (Warren Brown) from being hanged by the fanatical Magyar Ultra extremist group.

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Hits, Hype and Hustle: An Insider's Guide to the Music Business, BBC Four review - how gigs got big

Adam Sweeting

The “insider’s guide to the music business” tag attached to Hits, Hype and Hustle: An Insider's Guide to the Music Business (BBC Four) dangles the carrot of all kinds of clandestine scams being exposed, such as extortionate recording contracts, systematic chart-rigging or Mafia rackets involving cut-out records.

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Inside No 9, series 4, BBC Two review - laughter in the dark

Jasper Rees

Talk about laughter in the dark. With every successive episode, the fourth series of Inside No 9 (BBC Two) has perceptibly turned a shade blacker. "Zanzibar" was a festive farce mashing up half the plots of Shakespeare from Macbeth to A Comedy of Errors. "Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room" was a mournful reunion with a twist featuring a failed comedy double act.

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Great American Railway Journeys, Series 3, BBC Two review - edutainment despite shortage of trains

Marina Vaizey

Michael Portillo has barely been off a train since leaving politics, taking journeys blending scenery and history: it must be a relief receiving plaudits for edutainment instead of the abuse habitually heaped on politicians.

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Rebecka Martinsson: Arctic Murders, More4 review - Swedish sleuth is a cold case

Jasper Rees

Sara Lund and Saga Norén have a lot to answer for. Their adventures in the murk of murder as they grapple with their own dysfunctional psychology entranced audiences who don’t speak a scrap of Danish or Swedish. The search has since gone on for other gripping instances of Nordic noir.

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Britannia, Sky Atlantic review - Druids, sex and sorcery

Adam Sweeting

What did the Romans do for us? On the evidence of new drama Britannia, they pillaged, murdered and tortured, but also found themselves mesmerised by the psychedelic Druid magic that hovered over our ancient land like fairy dust.

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Before We Die, Channel 4 review - underwhelming and unengaging Scandi noir

Owen Richards

The new import is the latest procedural from Scandinavia, this time focusing on Stockholm’s biker gangs. The first episode aired Tuesday night, with the rest of the series available on All4 now.

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Art, Passion and Power: The Story of the Royal Collection, BBC Four review - monarchs knew the power of the portrait

Marina Vaizey

Henry VIII had a troubled marital history and Charles I lost his head, but both have also gone down in history as original, innovative and obsessive collectors of art, founders in different ways of what is now one of the world’s greatest accumulations in all media.

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Big Cats, BBC One review - how cats conquered the world

Marina Vaizey

Accepted wisdom seemed to be that in the animal world rats and cockroaches were the most adaptable and the most widely geographically distributed, followed by those pesky humans. But think again: the premise in this new three-part series is that the big cats have also done a terrific job of spreading worldwide, each a different species within the genus.

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