Channel 4
Veronica Lee
As we are learning each day during lockdown, necessity is the mother of invention. In Channel 4's case, it is learning how the wonders of modern technology can save a situation: to wit, The Steph Show was meant to come live daily from a shiny new studio in Leeds Docks, but yesterday debuted from host Steph McGovern's front room in North Yorkshire. McGovern, despite her self-confessed nerves and an occasional wobble from the technology, played a blinder in what she described as “Yorkshire Big Brother with one contestant” as robotic cameras captured her from various angles in her open Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been saturating the globe with its multi-format superheroes, leaving its DC rival looking clumsy and disorganised by comparison. However, DC’s “Arrowverse” – a roster of TV shows including Arrow, The Flash and Supergirl – is part of its fight-back effort, and now joining its ranks is this new take on the Batwoman character (E4).Kate Kane and her Batwoman alter ego first appeared in comic form in 1956, but this latest reincarnation leaps into the present with its androgynous-looking lesbian heroine, played by Ruby Rose (familiar from Netflix’s Orange is the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Director Nick Green’s new three-parter follows on the heels of his A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad and comparisons are sure to be made between his two subjects. Though the finer degrees of political power-play – and the sheer quantity of attendant blood-letting – may vary, both investigate how the two autocratic regimes concerned came into being and how they have managed to enjoy such almost total power for so long (and look likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future).The two stories share a central paradox, too, namely the personalities of their leaders. When Syria’s Bashar Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
“I am not intense.” That declaration arrives early in Feel Good, the new Channel 4 and Netflix romantic comedy fronted by comedian Mae Martin, who plays a fictionalised version of herself. Over Mae’s shoulder, we see a literal trash fire. She’s lit up the evidence of a past drug addiction. It smoulders in the background while she smoulders in the front.This scene is Feel Good in miniature: it encapsulates Martin's brand of vulnerable, quirky comedy, pinned to her appeal as a character and a creator. The series is easy to watch and easy to like. Still, Feel Good has a hindrance. For a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Channel 4 loves to walk the line between the compulsive and the repulsive, and this new dating show, complete with fake-salacious title, is a peerless specimen. The set-up is simple – one woman asks five guys who are “looking for love” to move in with her for a week, during which she chucks them out one by one and ends up with a winner.What’s amazing is how there’s never a shortage of volunteers desperate to make physical and emotional spectacles of themselves as they strip naked (only metaphorically, but that could change) and parade their insecurities. The hostess for this inaugural episode Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The rage and bitterness surrounding the Brexit brouhaha have made it immune to comedy and satire, but perhaps change is in the wind. Channel 4’s bogus royal family is back after a two-year gap, charged (as an introductory voice-over explained) by Her Majesty’s government with cheering up the divided nation.The timing is exquisite – or, I suppose, horrific if you’re a member of the real-life royals – since the air is still echoing with the fall-out from Harry and Meghan’s great escape and Prince Andrew’s “interesting” private life. Andrew was played by Tim Wallers like an obnoxious fund Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
With prison overcrowding reaching chronic proportions, police in County Durham have developed the Checkpoint programme to try to keep offenders out of jail with rehabilitation in the community. It’s like Felons Anonymous – candidates have to sign a contract confessing their crimes and stipulating that they won’t reoffend. They get one chance, and if they break the pledge they’ll end up behind bars.Some find it easier than others to kick their criminal habits, but according to statistics we were shown, prisoners released from jail were more than twice as likely to reoffend as Checkpoint “ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji of the Iraqi police may be set to become one of those classically dog-eared, depressed and down-at-heel detectives who have proliferated in crime fiction. He could join a lineage that includes Martin Cruz Smith’s battered Russian sleuth Arkady Renko, or Bernie Gunther, anti-hero of Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy. Or he may create his own category of one.Like the aforementioned, Khafaji finds himself battling for survival against a hostile regime (or at least the chaotic and combustible remains of one, as the heavy-handed Americans impose themselves on a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The race continues to create the most ridiculous cooking programme on TV. Channel 4’s new brainchild, Crazy Delicious, finds the culinary nutty professor Heston Blumenthal teaming up with fellow-judges Carla Hall and Niklas Ekstedt to become the “Gods of Food”.Each week, three amateur contestants turn up on a studio set which supposedly represents some kind of mythical garden or bosky glade from classical mythology (though with its warped scenery and funny-coloured foliage, it mostly looks like something out of an ancient episode of Star Trek), where they can find an exotic array of Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
An idyllic Scottish classroom full of happy children making sponge paintings of flowers with two enthusiastic young teachers – clearly, doom is in the air. Here comes that sense of dread again a little later at a ceilidh in a village hall, with everyone trying a little too hard to look happy. And it’s soon confirmed in a flash-forward to a pathologist wiping down an autopsy table.The first of the four episodes of C4's Deadwater Fell, written and created by Daisy Coulam (Humans, Grantchester) and directed by Lynsey Miller, is gripping and disturbing, with a strong cast, though some of the Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Channel 4’s The Accident closed with a bang and a whimper. Jack Thorne provided a definitive answer to his series’ central question, but his characters and subplots petered out in the meantime.Over four episodes, this series examined the fallout of a fatal explosion, in a town cloaked by the long shadows of Grenfell and Aberfan. Each episode centred on a kind of reckoning: between old friends, husbands and wives, mothers and widows. But its core tension, as tonight’s episode hammered home, was the standoff between a broken-hearted community and a corporation unmoved by their loss.The finale Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
And that’s a wrap: last night concluded 10 years of The Great British Bake Off. This show is the nation’s TV equivalent of comfort food. In the past, it has stuck to a well-worn recipe — the result was fun to fight over but easy to love.This series (on Channel 4) has been more divisive than most. The opening episodes delivered the usual comforts: dramatic spills, over-egged puns, and (most importantly?) some breathtaking baking. Arguably, this year’s contestants were less representative than usual, with more than half of the bakers still in their twenties. But they won us over quickly. Crowd Read more ...