sun 28/09/2025

tv

The Buccaneers, Apple TV+, Season 2 review - American adventuresses run riot in Cornwall

Adam Sweeting

Edith Wharton hadn’t finished her novel, The Buccaneers, when she died in 1937, but it was completed in 1993 by Marion Mainwaring. The result was not considered an unalloyed triumph, but there was certainly a lot more Edith Wharton in it than you’ll find in Apple TV+’s dramatisation.

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The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of the Brink's-Mat bandits

Adam Sweeting

The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery at Heathrow airport.

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Dept. Q, Netflix review - Danish crime thriller finds a new home in Edinburgh

Adam Sweeting

Netflix’s new detective-noir is a somewhat cosmopolitan beast. It’s written and directed by an American, Scott Frank, derived from a novel, Mercy, by the Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, and set in Edinburgh (as well as other flavourful Scottish locations). There are plenty of Scots in the cast too, although it’s the very English Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, The Crown etc) who takes the lead role of DCI Carl Morck.

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The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, BBC Two - boom and bust in the lingerie trade

Adam Sweeting

As this two-part documentary vividly illustrates, it has been a wild ride for Baroness Mone of Mayfair, the self-made businesswoman who emerged from Dennistoun in Glasgow’s East End in the Nineties and created the Ultimo Bra. This revolutionary undergarment ingeniously enhanced the wearer’s cleavage, using a silicon gel to mimic the feel of real breast tissue.

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Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality of deaf people's experience

Helen Hawkins

In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV detective series, the spotlight has now landed on Canterbury. Code of Silence frequently inserts a dramatic aerial shot of the city, its streets radiating out from the towering ecclesiastical landmark at its centre, to remind us where we are.

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The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisation of the horrific Lockerbie terror attack

Adam Sweeting

The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. This focused on the dogged and agonising search for truth by Jim Swire (played by Colin Firth), whose daughter Flora was killed in the attack, and raised a host of possibilities and theories about who did it and why.

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The Trunk, Netflix review - stylish, noir-ish Korean drama wrapped around a beguiling love story

Helen Hawkins

The trunk in the title is a luxury item, worth 50 million won – just north of £27,000 – shown sinking in deep water in the opening credits. It weaves through one of the classiest recent collaborations between Netflix and Korean TV, a haunting psychological drama that’s balm to the soul after the mob-handed violence on offer here at home. 

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Malpractice, ITV1, Series 2 review - fear and loathing in the psychiatric unit

Adam Sweeting

Following on from the first series of Malpractice in 2023, this second season again probes into issues of medical malfeasance and institutional corruption, in an environment where patient care frequently comes second to internal politics and self-preservation. The protagonist first time around was Niamh Algar’s Dr Lucinda Edwards, but this time it’s Tom Hughes as Dr James Ford, who works as a psychiatric registrar at the fictional Queen Mother’s University Hospital.

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Fake, ITV1 review - be careful what you wish for

Adam Sweeting

The art of the conman is persuading their victim to fool themselves, which is the premise that lies at the core of this Australian drama series. 

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Formula E: Driver, Prime Video review - inside the world's first zero-carbon sport

Adam Sweeting

The success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive not only provoked a viewer-stampede towards the world’s most expensive sport, but also triggered a chain reaction of similar behind-the-scenes sports documentaries. Suddenly we had Break Point (tennis), Full Swing (golf) and Tour de France: Unchained (cycling, obviously), hotly pursued by series on rugby, soccer and American Indiecar racing.

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