wed 13/08/2025

tv

Fearless, Series Finale, ITV review - big build-up to an anticlimax

Adam Sweeting

It was a coup by ITV to get Homeland writer Patrick Harbinson to pen this paranoid-conspiracy series, and rather droll to get Helen McCrory (wife of Homeland’s Damian Lewis) to play the lead.

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Game of Thrones, Series 7, Sky Atlantic review – slow, but it's just the beginning

Adam Sweeting

If nothing else, Game of Thrones has surely been the greatest boon to the British acting profession since they invented tights and greasepaint. Part of the fun is trying to think of somebody who hasn’t been in it yet.

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I Know Who You Are, BBC Four review - preposterous but hypnotic

Jasper Rees

All’s fair in love and law in I Know Who You Are. BBC Four’s latest Euro-import hails from Spain and, as per the channel’s practice, is coming at you in intense double doses, two 70-minute episodes every Saturday night.

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Orange Is the New Black, Season 5, Netflix review - counterpoint in a three-day prison riot

David Nice

Rippling outward from the initial story of a seemingly nice WASP woman who finds herself having to adapt in a women's prison, Orange Is the New Black quickly developed into the most multilayered, almost indigestibly rich of American TV dramas.

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GLOW, Netflix review - not quite comedy or drama

Jasper Rees

How much plotting went into GLOW? It has been gussied up by the people who brought you the jumbo Netflix hit Orange Is the New Black. Both shows are based on a true story and feature women of all ethnicities bitching and slapping in a contained environment. In Glow there’s less orange, and less black, but even more bitching and slapping.

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In the Dark, BBC One review - missing girls mystery promises hidden depths

Mark Sanderson

Detective Inspector Helen Weeks (MyAnna Buring), having finally cornered a skanky drug-dealer/benefit cheat in a blind alley – and stopped an eager PC from Tasering the woman – is punched in the stomach for her pains. How’s that for a hard-hitting start?

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Grandad, Dementia and Me, BBC One review - no easy solutions to terrifying mental condition

Marina Vaizey

The title gave us the true-life plot: this was a grandson’s filmed narrative of something that will touch us all, through acquaintance, friend, family and perhaps ourselves falling victim to some form of dementia. It's a word that covers a myriad of conditions, all of them affecting the mind.

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Broken, BBC One series finale review - Seán Bean's quiet immensity

Jasper Rees

The Catholic Church hasn’t enjoyed a good press on screen lately. Nuns punished Irishwomen for their pregnancies in Philomena. Priests interfered with altar boys in Spotlight. And in The Young Pope a Vatican fixated on conservatism and casuistry elects a pontiff who sees himself as a rock star.

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50 Shades of Gay, Channel 4 review - no better place in the world to be gay?

Mark Sanderson

It’s half a century since homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales, so who better to cast his gaze over the lie of the land than stately homo Rupert Everett?

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Melvyn Bragg on TV, BBC Two review – too many talking heads, too little action

Adam Sweeting

Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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