fri 26/09/2025

tv

Magpie Murders, BBC One review - zinging TV adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's bestseller

Adam Sweeting

Finding a fresh twist on the traditional detective mystery is virtually impossible, but Anthony Horowitz has made a bold stab at it with Magpie Murders. This TV adaptation (which appeared on the BritBox streaming platform last year) has been masterminded by Horowitz from his 2016 bestseller, which ingeniously features two interlocking stories, one set in the present day and one in the 1950s.

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Rabbit Hole, Paramount+ review - sabotage, subterfuge and corporate skulduggery

Adam Sweeting

Kiefer Sutherland has proved to be a hardy perennial over the decades, from movies like Young Guns and Flatliners to TV shows including Designated Survivor and especially the much-lauded 24. And he seems to have picked another winner with Rabbit Hole.

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Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy, Sky Documentaries review - a macabre slice of motor racing mythology

Adam Sweeting

Netflix’s hit show Drive to Survive has proved that F1 can grab ratings, but Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy (Sky Documentaries) is a more esoteric offering.

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Succession, Season Four, Sky Atlantic review - powerful beginning for the endgame

Helen Hawkins

How much more is there left to be said about the excellence of Succession? It’s back for a final season, and devotees will pore over every detail, every conversational ploy from robust to downright crude, every chess move on this volatile board. As they should, because nothing comparable has appeared on television.

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Great Expectations, BBC One review - modernised, muddied and muddled

Helen Hawkins

There’s no point in being upset with the writer Steven Knight for doing what he usually does; even so, many viewers will find what he has done with Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations far too Peaky for their tastes. 

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Endeavour: The Final Episode, ITV1 review - the final bow for Oxford's finest

Adam Sweeting

Endeavour first landed way back in 2012, and suddenly here we are, bidding it a final farewell after the end of its ninth series. Not everybody learned to love Shaun Evans as the pre-John Thaw Inspector Morse, but some of us may even have come to like the new boy better.

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MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, Netflix review - a field day for conspiracy theorists

Adam Sweeting

For fans of conspiracy theories, this three-part examination of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is irresistible, though the continuing anguish of friends and relatives of the 239 people aboard the flight makes for some painful viewing. 

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The Great British Bake Off Musical, Noel Coward Theatre review - blue-chip cast lift daft confection

Helen Hawkins

If you are hoping for some harmless fun at The Great British Bake Off Musical, probably with a few dodgy jokes about soggy bottoms mixed in, you won’t be disappointed. But what you might not expect is that the show will liberally ladle on the innuendo and is so filthy at times that it’s like being at an adult panto. The audience on opening night certainly seemed a primed one, aahing when a contestant was sent home, booing when one resorted to sabotage. 

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Daisy Jones & The 6, Amazon Prime review - hit rock'n'roll novel doesn't make great TV

Adam Sweeting

Based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six is the rags-to-riches-to-wreckage story of the titular Seventies rock band, supposedly somewhat based on Fleetwood Mac.

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Liaison, Apple TV+ review - tangly Franglais thriller presses some hot buttons

Adam Sweeting

Vive l’entente cordiale! “Despite Brexit” (as the BBC likes to say), Apple TV+ has successfully bridged the Channel to create this lurid Anglo-French thriller, in which Euro-skulduggery rubs shoulders with bribery, corruption and high treason.

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