What defines a life? Money and success? Happiness? Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams employs a narrator, much as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven did, who fields big questions like those while drawing the audience in. Bentley’s voice is an omniscient one, its owner unseen. 

In his celebrated TV-series Gomorrah (based on the bestseller of the same name by author Roberto Saviano) Italian director Stefano Sollima depicted the mafia ridden neighbourhoods of Naples in its rawest form – without myth, without any gloomy underworld charm or even the slightest hint of supposed gangster morality. The message Sollima wanted to get across was clear: there are no role models, no heroes. No one is happy here. 

The problem with making TV dramas about unsolved real-life murder mysteries is that they’re still unsolved, unless the film-makers decide to invent a fictional denouement. This might well trigger an avalanche of legal and ethical objections.

The return of this entertaining political drama is always welcome, though its soap-tinged mix of transatlantic politics and volatile personal relationships is beginning to look a little too genteel for our current age of ever-worsening crises.

A fizzy mystery cocktail with a twist and a splash, The Woman in Cabin 10, based on Ruth Ware’s bestseller, sails along like the sleek superyacht that provides its deadly setting.

Idris Elba has only just appeared as the British Prime Minister in the action comedy Heads of State (2025) – now he's portraying the American President in Kathryn Bigelow's tense political thriller A House of Dynamite.

They say no good deed goes unpunished, so when New York restaurateur Jake Friedken (Jude Law) allowed his wayward and star-crossed brother Vince (Jason Bateman) back into his life, he might have expected to experience a little turbulence. Instead, he finds himself engulfed in a hair-raising struggle to save his career and even his life.

What's going wrong with teenage boys and young men? Like the lauded Netflix series Adolescence, Steve – the second film collaboration between star-producer Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants – takes a bold and intriguing approach in its search for answers.

If she decided to run for election, Suranne Jones would probably stand a good chance of winning. The Chadderton-born actress and producer has been a driving figure in British television ever since she became known for playing Karen McDonald on Coronation Street (2000 and 2004). Her vigorous presence and fearless nature made her a force to be reckoned with right from the start.

Conceived and written by Matt Charman, whose CV includes an Oscar nomination for his work on Steven Spielberg’s film Bridge of Spies, Hostage is a rather puzzling mix of political thriller and domestic drama which can never decide whether it’s serious or not.