sat 19/07/2025

tv

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

Kiri, Channel 4 review - transracial adoption drama muddies the waters

Jasper Rees

“I’m black – I need to find out how black people live.” So reasoned Kiri, sitting in the back seat of the car driven by her social services case worker. She was on the way from her prospective adopters, a white middle-class couple who already had a teenage son, to pay a first unsupervised visit to her Nigerian-born grandparents.

Read more...

Hard Sun, BBC One review - cops versus the end of the world

Adam Sweeting

Fans of Luther will be familiar with writer Neil Cross’s fondness for hideous violence, shocking plot-twists and macabre humour, as well as characterful London locations, and happily they’re all present and correct in this new sci-fi thriller.

Read more...

Girlfriends, ITV review - Kay Mellor helps the middle-aged

Jasper Rees

You know where you are with Kay Mellor. Somewhere in the north, among a group of people brought together by pregnancy or prison, weight or, as in the case of the recent Love, Lies and Records, work. With Girlfriends (ITV), the common denominator is encroaching age.

Read more...

McMafia, BBC One review - James Norton looks promising in a murky le Carré world

Tom Birchenough

It’s not the first time that James Norton has kicked off BBC One’s New Year primetime celebrations in Russian style. Two years ago, he was costumed up as the courageous Prince Andrei, in illustrious ensemble company for Andrew Davies and Tom Harper’s War and Peace.

Read more...

Best of 2017: TV

theartsdesk

Young people will laugh incredulously when you tell them that once upon a time, there was only one television channel in Britain. Now we've lost count, and as even the Queen pointed out in her Christmas broadcast, many of her subjects would now be watching her (no doubt hoping for a walk-on by Meghan Markle) on phones or iPads.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...

Youssou N'Dour and Super Étoile de Dakar, Roundhouse re...

There is a freshness about a show by Youssou N’Dour that never seems to lose its glow. He still has one of the great voices of Africa, a versatile...

BBC Proms: First Night, Batiashvili, BBCSO, Oramo review - g...

The auditorium and arena were packed – and the stage even more so, bursting at the seams with players and singers: the perfect set-up for a First...

Album: Bonnie Dobson & The Hanging Stars - Dreams

What a great album – and what a great story to lift the heart in these fetid times. A story that crosses oceans and decades and brings together a...

Harvest review - blood, barley and adaptation

Lovers of a particular novel, when it’s adapted as a movie, often want book and movie to fit together as a hand in a glove. You want it to be like...

Poor Clare, Orange Tree Theatre review - saints cajole us si...

What am I, a philosophical if not political Marxist whose hero is Antonio Gramsci, doing in Harvey Nichols buying Comme des Garçons...

Album: Alex Warren - You'll Be Alright, Kid

The best-selling single so far this year in the UK is ...

That Bastard, Puccini!, Park Theatre review - inventive comi...

Before Luigi Illica wrote the libretti for Puccini’s Tosca and Madama Butterfly, he had joined the composer as the...

Hamlet, Buxton International Festival review - how to re-ima...

Ambroise Thomas’s version of Hamlet is the flagship production of this year’s Buxton International Festival and was always going to be a...