Counter Culture

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This is the Culture Vulture guide to the week’s TV for March 7–13. The selections and writing are by Pat Harrington, and the music is by Tim Bragg. The full written edition is available at the Counter Culture website.

Some weeks, the schedules feel as if they’ve been quietly curated by the cultural weather itself. This is one of those weeks. Across the channels, from Saturday through Friday, there’s a shared preoccupation with memory, technology and the pressures shaping ordinary lives. Archive pop rubs shoulders with Cold War paranoia; British social realism sits alongside dystopian futures; and the films keep circling questions of identity, agency and the stories we tell to make sense of ourselves.

Saturday sets the tone. At 12.50pm on Sky Documentaries, When We Were Kings returns us to the Rumble in the Jungle — but what lingers isn’t the punches, it’s the politics. Earlier that morning, at 10.15am on BBC Two, The Great Caruso offers Hollywood myth‑making at its most operatic, Mario Lanza’s voice carrying a biographical fantasy that believes wholeheartedly in the grandeur of art. And at 12.50pm on Film4, The Lavender Hill Mob shows how lightly a British comedy can age when it’s built on character rather than caricature.

By late afternoon, at 5pm on Sky Documentaries, Bowie steps into view in The Man Who Changed the World, a portrait of reinvention as a way of life. And then, as night falls, the week’s first major thematic pillar arrives: Minority Report, on ITV2 at 8.30pm. Two decades on, Spielberg’s vision of predictive policing and personalised surveillance feels less like a warning and more like a mirror. Saturday continues with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on Sky One at 8pm, before shifting into the warm humanity of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at 9pm on 5Star. BBC Two’s run of One Hit Wonders at the BBC leads into The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry at 10pm on Channel 4. The late‑night hours bring unease and introspection: A Brief History of a Family at 10.40pm on BBC Four, Blade Runner 2049 at 11pm on BBC One, Sound of Metal at midnight on BBC Two, and Fury at midnight on Channel 4.

Sunday continues the thread. At 4pm on Film4, Little Women offers warmth and ambition, a reminder that domestic stories can carry revolutionary force. But the night belongs to two titles that speak directly to our age. At 9pm on BBC One, The Capture returns with “Don’t Look at the Camera”, a thriller steeped in digital manipulation where every image is suspect. And at the same hour on BBC Two, The End We Start From follows Jodie Comer through a flooded Britain — a dystopia made intimate, where survival is measured not in spectacle but in the fragile bonds of family.

Elsewhere on Sunday at 9pm, Zero Dark Thirty on Legend revisits the long hunt for bin Laden, while Sky Arts screens The Manchurian Candidate, still one of the sharpest dissections of paranoia and political manipulation ever filmed. At 10pm on BBC Two, Platoon returns us to Vietnam with its raw emotional honesty, and at 10.20pm on ITV1, Faked: Hunting My Online Predator confronts the vulnerabilities of digital life. After midnight, Channel 4’s Freaky plays gleefully with horror and identity, and at midnight on Monday, BBC Two airs The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a lyrical lament for a city reshaped by forces beyond its inhabitants’ control.

Monday brings a shift toward inquiry. At 8pm on BBC One, Panorama asks whether the dangerous dogs ban is working, speaking to victims, experts and campaigners. At 10pm on BBC Four, The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms pulls back the curtain on the mathematical instructions that quietly choreograph our days. In the early hours, Film4’s Cold War at 1.30am offers a love story carved from longing and political fracture, followed by Channel 4’s No Other Land at 2.15am, a stark portrait of displacement in the West Bank.

Tuesday turns its attention to performance and perception. At 9pm on Sky Arts, Liza Minnelli: Hollywood’s Golden Child celebrates a life lived in the spotlight, followed at 10.15pm by Glenn Close: A Feminist Force, a study of an actor who reshaped expectations of female roles. At the same time on BBC Three, Cat Person explores the uneasy terrain of modern dating — the gulf between perception and reality, and the stories we project onto one another. And at 11.35pm on Talking Pictures, The Most Dangerous Game reminds us how long cinema has been fascinated by the hunt, both literal and metaphorical.

Wednesday brings the week’s emotional centrepiece. At 10pm on BBC Four, Boys from the Blackstuff returns with “Yosser’s Story”, still one of the most devastating portraits of economic despair ever broadcast. Bernard Hill’s cry of “Gizza job!” echoes across decades of austerity. At 11.10pm, “George’s Last Ride” deepens the series’ compassion, showing how dignity is negotiated under pressure. And at 11.20pm on Film4, The Father offers a formally daring, emotionally overwhelming portrait of dementia, with Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman delivering performances of extraordinary precision. After midnight, BBC One screens Harriet, honouring a life defined by resistance.

Thursday shifts into history and moral ambiguity. At 5.40pm on PBS America, The Invention of Surgery traces the origins of modern medicine. At 9pm on Great TV, MASH* blends irreverence with critique, its humour a form of resistance against the absurdity of war. At the same hour on Legend, Donnie Brasco explores loyalty and betrayal inside the Mafia. At 10pm on Channel 5, The Body in the Thames revisits a haunting case of trafficking and violence. And at 11.05pm on Film4, The Killing Fields confronts the terror of the Khmer Rouge with clarity and compassion.

Friday closes the week with reflection. At 8.55pm on PBS America, Bombshell: The Hidden Story of the Atomic Bomb examines how governments shaped public understanding of nuclear power. And at 11pm on BBC Two, Girl offers a quiet, emotionally intelligent drama about a relationship fraying under the weight of unspoken resentments. It’s a fitting end to a week preoccupied with truth, identity and the forces — political, technological, emotional — that shape our lives.

The streaming picks extend the themes. On Netflix from 11 March, The Man in the High Castle imagines an alternate world defined by authoritarian control. From 10 March, I Swear examines loyalty and guilt. On Apple TV+ from 13 March, Twisted Yoga exposes the vulnerabilities exploited by charismatic leaders. On Viaplay from 7 March, Paradis City blends noir atmosphere with simmering corruption. And on Prime Video from 11 March, Scarpetta brings forensic precision to character‑driven crime.

Across the week, the schedules form a kind of cultural map — a portrait of our preoccupations, our fears, our hopes. Stories of surveillance sit beside stories of survival; tales of reinvention beside tales of collapse. What emerges is a reminder that culture is always a conversation, and that even in the noisiest weeks, the right stories can help us hear ourselves more clearly.

Script by Pat Harrington, music by Tim Bragg and voiced by Ryan.