TV
Adam Sweeting
In the middle of a pavement-cracking, railway-melting heatwave, what could be more refreshing than a visit to the bleak but bracing landscapes of the Faroe Islands? This 18-island archipelago midway between Norway and Iceland is where BBC Four’s latest Nordic drama is situated, and its themes of murder, conspiracy and ecological awareness strike a topical note. A Danish-German-Faroese-Icelandic co-production, Trom doesn’t display the schizophrenic (or quadrophrenic) characteristics that might imply, but instead is a methodical thriller deftly played by a cast which is always unflashily Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After the sensational reinvention of the England cricket team this summer, with their so-called “Bazball” technique, the second-best thing to have happened to the Summer Game is Freddie Flintoff’s new series.Here, the former dynamic all-rounder and hero of the 2005 Ashes series goes back to his roots in Preston to try to convince the local kids that cricket could be a game for them. The voice-over makes sure to hammer the point home with a sledgehammer: “Cricket is the most elitist sport in Britain.”The major obstacle is that if the local teens have even heard of cricket at all, they’ve Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
At the beginning of this film, Mick Jagger says: “What most documentaries do is repeat the same thing over and over… all the mythology is repeated until it becomes true.” He’s right, as he so often is. This latest attempt to prise open the enigma of the Rolling Stones’ indefatigable frontman reveals nothing a reasonably observant Stones fan won’t already know.The film is the first of a quartet, the others being about Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and the sorely-missed drummer Charlie Watts. Watts aside, they do at least contain new interviews with their subjects, who are all reliably Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As the world lurches ever deeper into multiple manifestations of chaos, writer-director Peter Kosminsky’s new drama about cyber-warfare taps into the prevailing climate of unease. Based around the top secret operations of GCHQ at Cheltenham, it takes us backstage as the UK is struck by a crippling cyber attack which brings airports, cashpoint machines, email servers and online shopping to a screeching halt. However, it leaves social media intact, no doubt so the perpetrators can spread further panic and confusion with a barrage of spin and misinformation.It could happen. It already has Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Rowan Atkinson’s strange little comedy (written by Will Davies) is the story of Trevor Bingley, a rather pitiable late-middle-aged man who finds a new job as a house-sitter for a disdainful and ridiculously wealthy couple, Nina and Christian Kolstad-Bergenbatten (Jing Lusi and Julian Rhind-Tutt, pictured below). They live in a high-tech superhome in countless acres of lush green countryside.Little bits of back story filter into the narrative as the show ambles through its nine cartoon-like, slapsticky, 10-minute episodes. We learn that Trevor is a doting father to his daughter Maddy (India Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Suspect has a simple premise: a detective goes on a routine visit to a mortuary where an unidentified young woman has been taken after being found hanged. Suicide is the initial judgment: the cop, Danny Frater (James Nesbitt), grills the pathologist (Joely Richardson, pictured below) about the case and starts to leave. Then he pauses, policing instincts a-twitch, and uncovers the body’s head. Horror of horrors, it is his estranged daughter Christina, and he doesn’t believe she killed herself.Over eight half-hour episodes, Danny tracks the people in his daughter’s life, each episode bringing Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Renowned for an impressive body of work that includes This House, Quiz and Brexit: The Uncivil War, playwright and screenwriter James Graham has looked inwards and backwards for his new six-part series Sherwood.Set in a former mining community in Nottinghamshire, based on the author’s own home town, Sherwood (BBC One) charts a story of increasing violence and bitterness, based on real-life incidents that took place in the miners’ strike back in 1984.The historical background is evoked by newsreel footage from the Eighties of lines of police battling miners, and Prime Minister Margaret Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Has there ever been a smarter television series than DR’s Borgen? It’s regularly compared to The West Wing for its twisty interrogation of government shenanigans – and certainly it pays to get to grips with the coalition-driven political scene at the Castle, seat of the Danish government, just as it did with Aaron Sorkin’s take on the Hill. But what The West Wing didn’t have was a character as beguiling as Birgitte Nyborg, played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, to guide its audience. The truly clever thing about Borgen is how palatable its politics are, even when they seem mind-numbing on the Read more ...
We Own This City, Sky Atlantic review - 'The Wire' creator David Simon is back on the Baltimore beat
Adam Sweeting
It has been 14 years since The Wire, David Simon’s labyrinthine epic about crime and policing in Baltimore, reached the end of the line. Yet it seems he couldn’t let it lie, because he’s back on the Baltimore beat with We Own This City (made by HBO, showing on Sky Atlantic). This time, the series is based on the eponymous non-fiction book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, with crime novelist George Pelecanos sharing the “Creator” credit with Simon.This is not going to be a relaxing or easy watch, and flopping out on the sofa with a large glass of something mellow is not the ideal way Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Irony can be a trump card for a provocative comic such as Ricky Gervais, and he plays it right at the top of his SuperNature, an updated version of a show he started touring in 2019, which was rudely interrupted by the pandemic and is now his latest Netflix special. “Irony, where I say things I don’t mean. There’s going to be a lot of that throughout the show,” he says, launching into a clever skit purportedly saying women aren’t funny, but which then moves on to, for some, the most pressing issue of the day, self-ID.“I love the new women, Gervais says. “They’re great, aren’t they? The Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
If your memory of the 1957 John Wyndham novel about an alien invasion of an English village by chilling children with blonde pageboy hair is still pin-sharp, probably best to back-burner it before you watch Sky’s new adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos. The bones of the original plot are still there, but tricked out in concerns of a more contemporary kind. A brief prologue sets up the stakes: a couple trying to escape the family home are intercepted by an eerie child, who wags a reproving finger at them. Then the opening credit graphics roll, picturing a long vaginal tunnel of trees, at Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The fact that John Lydon has complained so long and so loudly about director Danny Boyle’s TV drama about the Sex Pistols has only served to pump up interest in the project.“I'm the one that wrote those songs, right. I gave them their image. I gave them everything. And they've done this rather snidey kind of piece of work behind my back," raged Lydon on ITV’s This Morning. Danny Boyle is an “arsehole”, he added (pictured below, the real John Lydon).A dollop of Rotten-esque spleen is just the job for pushing the show into the limelight, and its pacey, lurid and cartoon-like nature should Read more ...