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The Mentalist, Season 1, Episode 5: “Redwood” Review – When Memory Becomes the Enemy

October 17, 2026 at 6:37 pm · Filed under Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged Counter Culture UK, Patrick Jane, Redwood, Robin Tunney, Simon Baker, Teresa Lisbon, The Mentalist Episode 5, The Mentalist Redwood Review, The Mentalist Season 1, The Mentalist

Warning Spoilers! This episode is particularly unsettling – a murder mystery in which the principal suspect cannot remember whether she committed the crime. Most detective dramas concern themselves with people who know the truth but are determined to conceal it. In “Redwood”, the fifth episode of the first season of The Mentalist, we are presented with something rather different. A young woman may hold the key to a murder investigation, but the truth appears to have disappeared from her own mind.

It is an intriguing premise, and one that allows the series to explore some interesting questions about memory, trauma, prejudice and the reliability of appearances. It also gives us another opportunity to understand Patrick Jane, a man whose remarkable ability to read other people is matched by his considerable difficulty in coming to terms with his own past.

Following the financial intrigue and calculated greed of the previous episode, “Ladies in Red”, we move into an altogether different setting. The wealthy homes and expensive possessions are replaced by the forests and isolated roads surrounding the small Californian community of Redwood Point. There is something almost Gothic about the location. The towering trees, remote buildings and enclosed spaces create an atmosphere in which danger seems to lurk just beyond the limits of visibility.

Two young women, Nicole Gilbert and Kara Palmer, have disappeared after leaving a party. Their abandoned car is discovered in woodland, and the California Bureau of Investigation is called in. Jane soon discovers Kara’s body beneath the vehicle. She has been stabbed to death. Nicole, meanwhile, is missing.

When Nicole eventually reappears, the circumstances could hardly be more incriminating. She is covered in blood, carrying a knife and behaving in a confused and distressed manner. Worse still, she cannot remember what happened.

For the local sheriff, the conclusion seems obvious. Nicole killed her friend and is either concealing the truth or conveniently unable to recall it.

Jane is far less certain.

This is where the episode becomes interesting, because it exposes the difference between conventional police thinking and Jane’s approach to investigation. The authorities see physical evidence pointing towards an obvious suspect. Jane looks at the suspect herself. Her behaviour, her fear, her reactions and, perhaps most importantly, the things she cannot explain.

He believes Nicole is innocent, not because he has discovered some overlooked forensic evidence, but because her distress appears genuine. Nicole’s conversations with Jane are among the episode’s most effective scenes because they reveal how uncertain she is about her own mind. She does not merely fear being accused of murder; she fears that the accusations might be true. Jane quickly recognises that distinction. Rather than treating her fragmented recollections as evidence, he treats them as signs of a trauma she cannot yet fully process. The tension comes from the possibility that both Nicole and the investigators may be drawing conclusions from memories neither fully understands.

Of course, this presents a problem. Genuine distress is not proof of innocence. Guilty people can be frightened, confused and remorseful. Jane’s confidence in his own judgement occasionally borders on arrogance, and the series is generally more entertaining when it allows us to recognise that uncomfortable truth.

Simon Baker is particularly effective in these quieter scenes. His Patrick Jane is often at his most amusing when exposing the pomposity of authority figures or effortlessly puncturing somebody’s elaborate deception. Here, however, we see another side of him.

He can be surprisingly gentle.

Jane recognises that Nicole is vulnerable and that simply treating her as a criminal will achieve very little. His attempts to recover her memories require a degree of sensitivity that we do not always associate with his character. Yet even here, his compassion is inseparable from his willingness to manipulate circumstances.

He is not above pushing people towards uncomfortable discoveries if he believes the result justifies it.

That raises one of the episode’s more interesting moral questions. How far should an investigator go in persuading a traumatised person to revisit an experience they may be psychologically unprepared to confront?

Jane believes that unlocking Nicole’s memory is essential to establishing the truth. Teresa Lisbon is understandably more cautious.

The relationship between Jane and Lisbon continues to develop nicely. Robin Tunney gives Lisbon an authority that feels entirely natural. She is neither an obstructive bureaucrat nor a conveniently gullible superior who exists merely to admire Jane’s brilliance. She recognises his extraordinary abilities, but she also knows that his methods can create serious difficulties.

Their exchanges provide some of the series’ most enjoyable moments because the tension between them is rooted in genuinely different approaches to justice.

Lisbon believes in procedures, evidence and responsibility. Jane believes in observation, intuition and the capacity to expose human weakness. Neither approach is sufficient on its own. Several moments in the investigation illustrate this contrast particularly well. Lisbon remains focused on evidence that could withstand scrutiny in court, while Jane is prepared to follow instincts that cannot easily be justified on paper. The episode never entirely endorses either position. Instead, it suggests that solving the case depends upon a balance between Lisbon’s caution and Jane’s willingness to question assumptions that everyone else has accepted.

In “Redwood”, their differences are particularly important because a young woman’s future depends upon getting things right.

There is also a question of social prejudice running through the investigation.

Nicole’s troubled family background and previous difficulties with the law make her an easy target for suspicion. The suspicion directed towards Nicole often seems to solidify before the evidence has been properly examined. Once she reappears covered in blood and unable to remember what happened, many characters treat the case as effectively solved. The episode’s criticism of that attitude is one of its strongest aspects, because the audience can see how quickly a person’s reputation can become more influential than the facts.

Kara, by contrast, comes from a more respectable and apparently stable home. There is an unspoken assumption that one young woman is more likely to have committed a violent crime than the other simply because of the circumstances of her upbringing.

It is hardly an unfamiliar phenomenon.

People are frequently judged not only by what they have done but by where they come from, the people they associate with and the reputation they have acquired. Once an individual has been labelled troublesome, subsequent events tend to be interpreted through that reputation.

The episode suggests that the investigation is in danger of becoming an exercise in confirming existing suspicions rather than examining all the possibilities.

Jane, for all his faults, is particularly good at recognising when people are seeing what they expect to see.

The apparent simplicity of Nicole and Kara’s friendship also begins to unravel. As the investigation progresses, we discover that the relationship was not quite as straightforward as it first appeared. Personal loyalties, romantic entanglements and betrayals complicate the picture.

This is familiar territory for crime drama, but it serves a useful purpose here. Young people can experience friendship and romantic disappointment with an intensity that adults sometimes dismiss. A betrayal that might seem relatively insignificant to an outsider can feel devastating to those involved.

Yet “Redwood” does not ultimately reduce its central crime to a straightforward tale of youthful jealousy. The personal tensions become part of a more disturbing story, one in which Nicole’s missing memories conceal a terrible experience.

The episode’s treatment of memory is perhaps its most fascinating feature, although it should be approached with a little scepticism.

Television dramas have long been attracted to the idea that the mind can protect itself from unbearable experiences by blocking access to traumatic memories. Such stories offer obvious dramatic possibilities. A forgotten event becomes a mystery within a mystery, waiting for the right sound, image or emotional stimulus to unlock it.

Here, Jane uses familiar surroundings and sensory associations to encourage Nicole to reconstruct the events of the night Kara was killed. These sequences are effective because they place the viewer in much the same position as Nicole herself. Each fragment of recollection appears to offer clarity only to raise further questions. Rather than relying solely on exposition, the episode allows the audience to experience some of the confusion and uncertainty created by memories that refuse to form a coherent narrative.

It makes for compelling television, but real memory is considerably less reliable than detective fiction sometimes suggests. Trauma can certainly disrupt memory, but recollection is not a perfect recording that can simply be replayed. Memory can be fragmented, altered and influenced by suggestion. Recovering an apparently forgotten experience does not necessarily guarantee its accuracy.

This is worth remembering because the methods employed by Jane, however successful within the fictional world of The Mentalist, would raise serious questions if used in a real criminal investigation.

There is a danger in confusing psychological insight with scientific certainty.

Nevertheless, the scenes in which Nicole struggles to remember are among the episode’s strongest. Shelby Fenner gives a convincing performance as a young woman caught between terror and uncertainty. Her character is not simply frightened of what somebody else may have done. She is frightened of what she herself might be capable of doing.

That is a particularly cruel position in which to find oneself.

The direction makes effective use of the woodland setting. The forests are beautiful, but they are also threatening. Their apparent tranquillity disguises the possibility of violence, and the isolation creates the uncomfortable feeling that help may be a very long way away.

John Behring keeps the story moving without allowing the atmospheric elements to overwhelm the investigation. The result is an episode that feels rather more ominous than some of its predecessors.

As the truth emerges, the narrative becomes more conventional, with the investigation leading towards a dangerous confrontation. Lisbon finds herself in considerable peril, providing a reminder that Jane’s cleverness does not remove the physical risks faced by the people around him.

Indeed, there is an interesting reversal here. Jane is usually the person who walks confidently into dangerous situations, apparently unconcerned by the consequences. In this case, Lisbon must confront the immediate threat while Jane contributes from a distance.

The sequence works because it gives Lisbon the opportunity to demonstrate that she is considerably more than Jane’s supervisor or occasional foil.

There is also something rather satisfying about seeing his psychological tricks applied in a situation where the stakes are genuinely high.

One criticism is that the eventual solution follows a familiar pattern. The episode is at its most original when examining Nicole’s uncertainty and the assumptions made about her guilt. Once the identity of the killer becomes clearer, some of that psychological complexity gives way to more conventional thriller mechanics.

The villain’s motivation is also less compelling than the circumstances surrounding the crime. We have become invested in Nicole’s psychological ordeal, and the explanation of the murder cannot quite match the disturbing possibilities raised by the opening.

But perhaps that is not the point.

What matters most is that the apparent murderer turns out to have been a victim, and that somebody whose background encouraged others to distrust her proves to have been judged unfairly.

There is a distinctly humane argument running beneath the entertainment. People are not necessarily what they appear to be, and those who are easiest to accuse are not always those who deserve suspicion.

It would be tempting to describe this episode as demonstrating Jane’s empathy, but that is only part of the story.

Jane is an interesting character precisely because his empathy is selective and complicated. He can show extraordinary understanding towards a frightened young woman while casually humiliating somebody he considers dishonest or foolish. He can recognise another person’s suffering yet remain remarkably insensitive to the discomfort caused by his own behaviour.

There is a contradiction at the heart of his personality.

His understanding of human emotions is both a gift and a weapon.

We also know that behind his apparently effortless confidence lies the terrible loss of his wife and daughter at the hands of Red John. Jane’s professional life is devoted to exposing other people’s secrets, but his own tragedy remains unresolved.

Perhaps this is why he responds so strongly to people who have suffered experiences beyond their control.

Helping Nicole recover some understanding of what happened cannot undo her ordeal, any more than Jane’s pursuit of criminals can restore his family. But it does offer a small opportunity to bring order to a world that has suddenly become terrifying and incomprehensible.

There is genuine poignancy in that.

“Redwood” is not a flawless episode. Its understanding of traumatic memory is more convenient for storytelling than entirely convincing as psychology, and the final resolution lacks some of the sophistication of its central premise.

Even so, it is among the more affecting early instalments of The Mentalist.

It demonstrates that the series is capable of more than ingenious revelations, amusing exchanges and the exposure of elaborate lies. It can also examine the consequences of violence for those left behind.

Most importantly, it gives Simon Baker the opportunity to broaden his portrayal of Patrick Jane. Beneath the showmanship, the mischievous smile and the sometimes insufferable certainty is a man who understands suffering rather better than he lets on.

We are beginning to see why Jane is such an appealing character. He is not necessarily a good man in the conventional sense. He is manipulative, frequently arrogant and perfectly willing to ignore rules he considers inconvenient.

Yet he has an instinctive sympathy for people who have been hurt, particularly when those in authority are too eager to condemn them.

That contradiction is central to the success of the series.

In “Redwood”, the most important mystery is not simply who killed Kara Palmer. It is whether Nicole Gilbert can trust her own mind, and whether those investigating the crime can look beyond the evidence that seems to condemn her.

The episode leaves us with a thought worth considering beyond the boundaries of detective fiction.

The truth is not always concealed by somebody telling lies. Sometimes it is obscured by fear, prejudice and the dangerous certainty of people who believe they already know the answer.

And Patrick Jane, of all people, understands the dangers of certainty.

An engaging, atmospheric and unexpectedly compassionate episode that deepens our understanding of Jane while asking some uncomfortable questions about guilt, memory and the ease with which suspicion becomes judgement.

By Chris Storton

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Culture Vulture: Best TV, Films and Streaming for 17–23 October 2026

October 16, 2026 at 4:27 pm · Filed under Culture Vulture, Film & DVD Reviews, Netflix, Radio, Streaming, TV Shows, Walter Presents ·Tagged best TV this week, Counter Culture, Culture Vulture, Film Reviews, radio highlights, streaming recommendations, TV recommendations, UK streaming guide, weekly culture guide, what to watch this week

St Fagans National Museum of History , Cardiff ,Wales, UK 27 Oct 2024 : Visitor Message board to the Aberfan Disaster 1966

Sixty years ago, on the morning of 21 October 1966, disaster struck the Welsh mining village of Aberfan. A huge mass of coal waste, saturated by heavy rain, collapsed and surged down the mountainside, engulfing houses and Pantglas Junior School. By the time the rescue operations were over, 144 people had died, including 116 children.

It remains one of the most heartbreaking tragedies in modern British history. The children had barely begun their final day of school before the half-term holiday. Many never came home.

Yet what makes Aberfan particularly disturbing is that this was not simply an unavoidable natural disaster. The spoil tips above the village had been allowed to grow despite longstanding concerns about their stability. Watercourses beneath the waste made the location especially dangerous. The National Coal Board had failed in its responsibilities, and the subsequent tribunal exposed a catalogue of negligence.

The grief was compounded by what followed. Families who had suffered unimaginable losses found themselves confronting an establishment reluctant to accept responsibility and, at times, more concerned with protecting institutions than helping those they had failed. Even the question of removing the remaining dangerous tips became another battle.

This week’s television commemorations are particularly important. Aberfan: The Village That Fought Back (BBC Two, Monday, 9pm) examines the community’s fight for justice and the resistance it encountered. Meanwhile, Alex Jones: Un Diwrnod yn Aberfan (BBC iPlayer, from Sunday) offers another opportunity to remember the lives lost and the people left behind.

For me, Aberfan is also a story about class and power. It raises questions about whose warnings are heard, whose lives are valued and what happens when institutions become more concerned with defending themselves than acknowledging their mistakes. Those questions have certainly not disappeared in the intervening sixty years.

This is our principal recommendation of the week. These programmes deserve to be watched, discussed and remembered.

There are two other highlights I would particularly recommend.

The first is The Day the Earth Stood Still (Talking Pictures, Saturday, 4pm). This 1951 science-fiction classic is one of my favourite films. Its message about the dangers of militarism and humanity’s capacity for self-destruction is just as relevant now as it was during the early Cold War. There was a remake in 2008, which I actually rather like, but the original remains comfortably superior. Sometimes the simplest approach is also the most powerful.

Our third highlight is Thursday’s Mercury Prize: Album of the Year (BBC Four, 9.30pm). In an age dominated by streaming playlists and individual tracks, it might seem strange to celebrate the album as a distinct artistic achievement. Yet the album remains alive and well. It allows musicians to develop ideas, establish moods and tell stories in ways that individual songs often cannot. This year’s ceremony, featuring performances by some of the most interesting names in British music, promises to be more of a miniature festival than a conventional awards show.

Elsewhere, Stacey Dooley appears to be taking over the television schedules. Every time I look through the listings, there she is again. Fortunately, she’s very good at what she does, and her documentaries continue to investigate worthwhile and sometimes uncomfortable subjects.

We’re also particularly pleased to see another Storyville documentary. Regular readers will know how much we value this strand, which consistently introduces British audiences to films that might otherwise struggle to find a place on mainstream television.

Among the films, there’s everything from Hitchcock and Agnès Varda to Edgar Wright, a little political satire, some classic horror and several powerful examinations of injustice.

Plenty to enjoy, and plenty to think about.

Saturday 17 October

North by Northwest (1959) — BBC Two, 2.15pm

Alfred Hitchcock’s magnificent espionage thriller stars Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive mistaken for a secret agent and pursued across America by people who want him dead.

The film combines mistaken identity, romantic intrigue and spectacular set pieces, including the famous crop-duster sequence and the climactic confrontation on Mount Rushmore.

Grant is perfectly cast as the sophisticated innocent whose comfortable existence is turned upside down. Eva Marie Saint provides an intriguing romantic foil, while James Mason is wonderfully sinister.

Hitchcock was a master of suspense, but what makes this film so enjoyable is its elegance and humour. More than sixty years later, it remains a model of popular filmmaking.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) — Talking Pictures TV, 4pm

One of my favourite science-fiction films, and one whose message about peace seems especially appropriate for our troubled times.

Directed by Robert Wise, the story begins when a flying saucer lands in Washington and an extraterrestrial visitor, Klaatu, emerges accompanied by an imposing robot called Gort.

Klaatu has come with a warning. Humanity’s development of increasingly destructive weapons threatens not just Earth but potentially the wider universe. Unless human beings learn to control their aggression, consequences will follow.

Michael Rennie’s restrained performance gives Klaatu a quiet dignity. The film avoids the usual temptation to make aliens into monsters and instead invites us to look critically at ourselves.

Released during the Cold War, it reflects contemporary anxieties about nuclear annihilation, but its underlying concerns have lost none of their force.

The 2008 remake starring Keanu Reeves is quite good and shifts the emphasis towards environmental destruction. Nevertheless, the original is much better. It trusts its ideas, its dialogue and its audience. There are lessons here that humanity has still not fully learned.

Talking Pictures: World Cinema Classics — BBC Four, 9pm

Celia Imrie guides viewers through some of the great achievements of international cinema, considering filmmakers including Akira Kurosawa, Agnès Varda, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel and Ingmar Bergman.

It’s an impressive collection of directors whose approaches differ considerably but who share a determination to explore what cinema can achieve.

Kurosawa brought extraordinary visual power and moral complexity to Japanese cinema. Varda helped pioneer the French New Wave with her distinctive, humane approach. Truffaut examined childhood, love and the cinema itself. Buñuel used surrealism to attack conventional morality, while Bergman explored faith, death, relationships and the human condition.

An excellent introduction for newcomers and a welcome opportunity for established film enthusiasts to revisit familiar favourites.

American Star (2024) — Film4, 9pm

Ian McShane stars as Wilson, an ageing assassin who travels to Fuerteventura to carry out what should be a straightforward assignment.

Instead, he finds himself drawn into the rhythms of island life and begins forming relationships with people who know nothing of his violent profession.

The film takes an unusually reflective approach to the hitman thriller. Rather than relying upon constant action, it examines loneliness, mortality and the possibility of finding something meaningful in an otherwise bleak existence.

McShane’s commanding screen presence makes him ideally suited to the role. A thoughtful variation on familiar territory.

The Everly Brothers: Harmonies from Heaven — Sky Arts, 9pm; NOW catch-up

Don and Phil Everly possessed one of the most beautiful vocal blends in popular music.

Their harmonies influenced everyone from the Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel, while songs such as Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie and All I Have to Do Is Dream helped establish the sound of modern popular music.

This documentary explores their musical achievements, family background and frequently troubled relationship.

There’s something poignant about the contrast between those immaculate harmonies and the personal tensions that eventually drove the brothers apart.

A reminder that music can create an impression of perfect unity even when the musicians themselves are struggling to maintain it.

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) — BBC Four, 9.45pm

Agnès Varda’s celebrated French New Wave drama follows a young singer wandering through Paris while awaiting the results of a medical examination.

Corinne Marchand plays Cléo, whose apparent confidence gradually gives way to fear and self-examination.

Varda uses the streets, cafés and everyday encounters of Paris to explore mortality, femininity and the experience of being watched and judged.

The film’s treatment of time is particularly interesting. What begins as an ordinary afternoon becomes an intense examination of what it means to be alive.

Beautifully observed, humane and surprisingly accessible, this remains one of the outstanding achievements of French cinema.

Death Race 2000 (1975) — Great Action, 11.25pm

Paul Bartel’s outrageous dystopian action film takes place in a future America where a murderous cross-country motor race has become a major spectator sport.

Drivers score points by killing pedestrians, and the public treats the carnage as entertainment.

David Carradine stars as the mysterious Frankenstein, with Sylvester Stallone among his competitors.

The film is often remembered for its ludicrous violence, bizarre characters and low-budget exploitation thrills. What sometimes gets overlooked is the political satire.

Beneath the deliberately excessive action lies a savage attack on authoritarianism, sensationalist media, celebrity culture and the manipulation of public opinion.

Its vision of a society entertained by cruelty is uncomfortably recognisable. Sometimes satire has to be outrageous to make its point.

Saint Maud (2019) — Film4, 1.15am, early Sunday

Rose Glass’s unsettling psychological horror stars Morfydd Clark as Maud, a young private carer whose intense religious convictions become increasingly dangerous.

Caring for Amanda, a terminally ill former dancer played by Jennifer Ehle, Maud convinces herself that she has a divine mission to save her patient’s soul.

What makes the film so effective is its refusal to offer straightforward explanations. Is Maud experiencing religious revelation, psychological disturbance or some frightening combination of the two?

Clark’s performance is extraordinary, capturing both vulnerability and fanaticism.

This is an intelligent examination of religious obsession, loneliness and the frightening consequences of absolute certainty.

Sunday 18 October

The Addams Family (1991) — ITV2, 4pm

The gloriously macabre Addams family return in Barry Sonnenfeld’s film adaptation of Charles Addams’s famous creations.

Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia are wonderfully cast as Morticia and Gomez, while Christina Ricci almost steals the picture as the magnificently deadpan Wednesday.

The joke, of course, is that this supposedly monstrous family is often more affectionate and loyal than the respectable people surrounding them.

The film revels in gothic imagery, eccentric humour and cheerful disregard for conventional values.

A thoroughly enjoyable comedy that has lost little of its appeal.

The Balkans: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier — BBC Two, 8pm

BBC Europe editor Katya Adler travels through Croatia, Bosnia and Albania, exploring how the region has changed since the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and the wider upheavals of the 1990s.

The wars that followed Yugoslavia’s disintegration left deep political, social and psychological scars. Old tensions have not simply disappeared, while questions of national identity and European integration remain contentious.

Adler is a knowledgeable guide to a region often neglected in British coverage of European affairs.

The Balkans have repeatedly played an important part in European history. Understanding their present requires an appreciation of the complicated past that continues to shape everyday life.

Kevin McCloud’s Classic Car Road Trips — Channel 4, 8pm (1/6)

Kevin McCloud combines an enthusiasm for design with a journey through the history and culture of some of Europe’s most celebrated cars.

His opening trip takes him along the French Riviera, travelling from Cannes towards Monaco in a beautiful 1960s Citroën DS convertible.

The DS was one of the most remarkable cars ever produced. When introduced in 1955, its futuristic appearance and advanced engineering seemed to belong to another age.

Its hydropneumatic suspension and elegant styling helped establish it as an icon of French design.

There are worse ways to spend an hour than travelling through the Riviera in such a magnificent machine, particularly with McCloud explaining the design philosophy behind it.

Living (2022) — Film4, 9pm

Bill Nighy gives one of his finest performances in this deeply moving drama about an emotionally reserved civil servant who discovers that he has a terminal illness.

Set in 1950s London, the film follows a man who has spent much of his life observing routine and convention but now begins questioning what that life has amounted to.

Adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro from Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, the film explores mortality, bureaucracy and the possibility of meaningful action.

Nighy brings an extraordinary restraint to the central performance.

It’s a gentle, thoughtful and ultimately uplifting film about the importance of making our limited time count.

Time — BBC One, 9pm (series finale; full series on iPlayer)

We’ve deliberately avoided saying too much about this latest series because we’ve been saving it up for a proper binge-watch.

David Tennant stars as prison officer Bobby Bailey, and Tennant’s involvement is reason enough to attract our attention. He’s one of those actors who can make even a quiet moment compelling.

The prison setting also promises an opportunity to explore questions of institutional power, punishment, responsibility and human vulnerability.

Rather than concentrate on the finale alone, our recommendation is to watch the series from the beginning on BBC iPlayer.

Some dramas are best experienced as a complete work, allowing their characters and tensions to develop without interruption. This looks like one of them.

French Connection II (1975) — Talking Pictures TV, 10.10pm

Gene Hackman returns as the obsessive New York detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in John Frankenheimer’s sequel to William Friedkin’s celebrated crime thriller.

This time Doyle travels to Marseille in pursuit of the heroin trafficker Alain Charnier, played once again by Fernando Rey.

The change of location gives the sequel a distinctive character, while Hackman delivers another uncompromising performance.

It’s a darker, sometimes more psychologically disturbing film than its predecessor, particularly in its treatment of Doyle’s vulnerability.

A worthy sequel to one of the defining American crime films of the 1970s.

Priscilla (2023) — BBC Two, 10.45pm

Sofia Coppola approaches the Elvis Presley story from an unusual perspective, concentrating on the experiences of Priscilla Beaulieu, who met the singer when she was still a teenager.

Cailee Spaeny plays Priscilla, while Jacob Elordi portrays Elvis.

Rather than presenting another celebration of the King’s musical genius, Coppola examines the imbalance of power within the relationship.

The glamour of Graceland gradually gives way to isolation, control and frustration.

It’s an intimate film about a young woman discovering that life alongside one of the world’s most famous entertainers can be deeply restrictive.

Children of Men (2006) — BBC One, 11.40pm

Alfonso Cuarón’s extraordinary dystopian drama imagines a future in which humanity has become infertile and society is collapsing.

Clive Owen plays Theo, a disillusioned former activist drawn into a dangerous mission to protect a young refugee.

The film’s images of authoritarian government, desperate migration, social breakdown and institutional cruelty have acquired an unsettling contemporary relevance.

Cuarón’s direction is remarkable, particularly the extended action sequences that place viewers directly inside the chaos.

Yet beneath the violence lies a profoundly humane argument about compassion and hope.

One of the finest science-fiction films of the twenty-first century.

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024) — Channel 4, midnight, early Monday

Raoul Peck’s documentary tells the story of Ernest Cole, the South African photographer whose images exposed the brutality of apartheid.

Cole documented the everyday humiliations, restrictions and injustices imposed upon Black South Africans by the racist state.

His work was both artistic achievement and political testimony. It made visible a system that depended partly upon controlling what outsiders could see.

His photographs contributed to his exile, and much of his later life was marked by hardship and displacement.

Peck uses Cole’s remarkable archive to explore racial oppression, memory and the terrible personal costs that can accompany the pursuit of truth.

An important documentary about a photographer whose work deserves to be much better known.

Monday 19 October

Aberfan: The Village That Fought Back — BBC Two, 9pm; repeated Tuesday, 11pm

Sixty years after the Aberfan disaster, this documentary examines the struggle that followed the deaths of 144 people, including 116 children.

For the families, the nightmare did not end when the rescue operation finished.

They faced official resistance, evasions and an extraordinary struggle to have the remaining dangerous coal tips removed from above their village.

The disaster tribunal placed responsibility upon the National Coal Board, but securing practical justice proved another matter.

Particularly shameful was the pressure placed upon the Aberfan Disaster Fund to contribute towards the removal of the remaining tips. Money donated in sympathy for bereaved families was treated as a potential source of funding for work that public authorities should have undertaken.

This is not simply a historical account of industrial negligence. It’s about the relationship between ordinary people and powerful institutions, and the lengths those institutions may go to in order to avoid accountability.

The villagers’ persistence deserves recognition alongside the suffering they endured.

Essential viewing, and our most important television recommendation of the week.

Selma (2014) — BBC Two, 11.05pm

Ava DuVernay’s absorbing historical drama examines the 1965 campaign for voting rights in Alabama, culminating in the famous marches from Selma to Montgomery.

David Oyelowo is outstanding as Dr Martin Luther King Jr, capturing both his charisma and the enormous pressures of leadership.

The film avoids presenting the civil rights movement as a simple procession of heroic speeches and inevitable victories.

Instead, it explores the difficult strategic decisions, internal disagreements, state violence and extraordinary courage involved in challenging segregation.

Its depiction of collective action is particularly powerful.

Progress did not arrive because powerful people suddenly became generous. It came because ordinary people organised, protested and refused to accept injustice.

Priyo Maloti (2024) — Channel 4, South Asian film season; time to be confirmed

This Bangladeshi drama, directed by Shankha Dasgupta, stars Mehazabien Chowdhury in her feature-film debut.

She plays Maloti, a young pregnant woman whose life is devastated when her husband dies in a catastrophic fire.

What follows is a struggle to survive financially and emotionally in circumstances where support cannot always be taken for granted.

The film examines grief, insecurity and the vulnerability of those suddenly left to confront hardship alone.

It’s a welcome selection from Channel 4’s South Asian film season, which provides an opportunity to discover cinema beyond the industries and countries that usually dominate British film schedules.

Tuesday 20 October

Hot Fuzz (2007) — Film4, 9pm

Edgar Wright’s wonderfully inventive action-comedy stars Simon Pegg as Nicholas Angel, a London police officer whose extraordinary efficiency embarrasses his colleagues.

Transferred to the apparently peaceful Gloucestershire village of Sandford, he discovers that beneath the picturesque surface something decidedly sinister is happening.

Nick Frost is excellent as his enthusiastic but less disciplined partner, Danny Butterman.

The film affectionately mocks the conventions of Hollywood action movies while delivering a wonderfully sharp satire of small-town respectability, authoritarianism and the desire to preserve appearances at any cost.

Its rapid editing, visual jokes and lovingly constructed action sequences reward repeated viewing.

One of the finest British comedies of its generation.

Stacey Dooley: Down the K-Hole — BBC Three, 9pm; BBC One, 10.40pm

Stacey Dooley at the National TV Awards 2019 at the O2 Arena, London.

Stacey Dooley investigates ketamine use and the growing concern surrounding the drug.

Originally developed as an anaesthetic and now also being researched and used in carefully controlled medical settings, ketamine has become increasingly prominent as a recreational substance.

Its effects can include dissociation and altered perception, while repeated heavy use can cause serious harm, particularly to the bladder and urinary system.

Dooley’s strength as a presenter is her willingness to speak to people without immediately passing judgement. That approach can be especially valuable when examining drug use, where moral condemnation often gets in the way of understanding.

An important subject deserving careful investigation.

Clickbait Clinic with Stacey Dooley: Can Blue Dye Make Me Smarter? — BBC One, 11.40pm

Stacey Dooley is certainly keeping herself busy.

Here she examines the growing enthusiasm for methylene blue, a substance with established medical uses that has also attracted attention for possible effects on brain function.

Some preliminary research has explored potential neurological applications, including areas relevant to Alzheimer’s disease, but that is a long way from demonstrating that healthy people can improve their intelligence by taking it.

The distinction between interesting scientific research and commercial exaggeration is crucial.

The programme should offer a useful examination of how tentative findings can become exaggerated promises in the world of online health trends.

Midnight Run (1988) — Film4, 11.25pm

Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin form one of cinema’s most enjoyable mismatched partnerships in this action-comedy directed by Martin Brest.

De Niro plays Jack Walsh, a bounty hunter tasked with bringing a former Mafia accountant across America.

Grodin plays the accountant, Jonathan Mardukas, whose apparently mild personality conceals a remarkable ability to frustrate his captor.

Their journey becomes increasingly chaotic as criminals, federal agents and competing bounty hunters join the pursuit.

The action is entertaining, but the real pleasure lies in the developing relationship between the two men.

A clever, funny film that knows exactly how to combine comedy with genuine character development.

Storyville: A Want in Her — BBC Four; time to be confirmed

Another documentary from the excellent Storyville strand, which has long been one of our favourites at Counter Culture.

This deeply personal film explores the complexities of caring for someone affected by mental illness and addiction.

Such relationships can involve extraordinary love and loyalty, but also exhaustion, resentment and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

The challenge for documentary filmmaking is to acknowledge these difficult feelings without reducing the person experiencing illness or addiction to a problem that needs solving.

Storyville has built its reputation by presenting demanding subjects with intelligence, honesty and humanity.

Its documentaries regularly demonstrate why independent filmmaking remains so important.

Wednesday 21 October

Caligula’s Hidden Legacy — PBS America, 7.05pm (1/2)

The Roman emperor Caligula has entered popular imagination as the embodiment of cruelty, extravagance and madness.

But how much do we actually know about him?

Many of the surviving accounts were written by historians hostile to his rule, raising questions about the accuracy of the more sensational stories.

This documentary investigates the historical figure behind the notorious reputation.

Ancient Rome remains endlessly fascinating partly because its politics, ambitions and struggles for power can appear so familiar.

A useful opportunity to distinguish historical evidence from the legends accumulated over centuries.

The World’s End (2013) — Film4, 9pm

Edgar Wright reunites Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for the final instalment of the celebrated Cornetto trilogy.

Five former friends return to their hometown in an attempt to recreate a legendary pub crawl from their youth.

Their reunion is complicated by the behaviour of Gary King, played by Pegg, a man who has never properly accepted that his teenage years are over.

What begins as a comedy about ageing, friendship and nostalgia becomes something rather more extraordinary when the group discovers that the town has changed in unexpected ways.

The science-fiction elements are entertaining, but beneath them lies a surprisingly affecting exploration of disappointment and the difficulty of moving on.

Alongside Tuesday’s Hot Fuzz, this provides an enjoyable opportunity to revisit two very different Edgar Wright comedies.

The Experiment — Channel 4, 10pm

Matt Fraser and Sophie Morgan invite ordinary people to participate in a social experiment within a new care facility.

The programme examines attitudes, behaviour and the relationships that develop when people are placed in an unfamiliar institutional environment.

There’s an interesting parallel with Netflix’s new Stanford Prison Experiment, which also begins with participants placed into assigned roles within a controlled setting.

The situations are different, but both invite us to consider how surroundings, expectations and power structures can influence behaviour.

The crucial question is whether people simply adapt to the roles given to them or retain the ability to challenge the assumptions underlying those roles.

Alison Steadman Remembers The Singing Detective — BBC Four, 10pm

Alison Steadman looks back at Dennis Potter’s extraordinary 1986 television drama, one of the most ambitious works ever produced for British television.

Potter combined psychological investigation, musical fantasy, detective fiction and autobiography to create something genuinely original.

Michael Gambon played Philip Marlow, a writer hospitalised with a debilitating skin condition whose memories and imagination become increasingly entangled.

The drama remains a testament to an era when British television was willing to take enormous creative risks.

The Singing Detective: Lovely Days, Stroke Clues — BBC Four, 10.15pm

An opportunity to revisit Potter’s masterpiece immediately after Alison Steadman’s introduction.

The series moves between Marlow’s hospital experiences, childhood memories and the imaginary detective story he has created.

Popular songs become part of an elaborate psychological landscape, while apparently unrelated incidents gradually reveal deeper connections.

Potter’s work demands attention, but the rewards are considerable.

Few television writers have explored the relationship between memory, illness, guilt and imagination with comparable originality.

Night of the Demon (1957) — Talking Pictures TV, 9.10pm

Jacques Tourneur’s classic supernatural horror follows an American psychologist investigating a mysterious cult led by the sinister Dr Julian Karswell.

Dana Andrews plays the sceptical investigator, while Niall MacGinnis gives a wonderfully unsettling performance as Karswell.

Based on M. R. James’s Casting the Runes, the film creates an atmosphere of growing dread.

Much of its effectiveness comes from the tension between rational explanation and the possibility that supernatural forces really do exist.

There has long been debate about the decision to show the demon itself, rather than leaving everything to the viewer’s imagination.

Whatever one’s view, the film remains one of the finest examples of British supernatural cinema.

Stacey Dooley: Rape on Trial — BBC Three, 11pm (1/2) and 11.50pm (2/2)

Stacey Dooley follows women who have reported being raped by men they know, examining the difficult and often lengthy journey towards trial.

The first programme introduces the women’s experiences and the challenges involved in pursuing their cases.

The second considers the approach of the trials, particularly the way complainants’ credibility may be scrutinised during proceedings.

These are sensitive and difficult subjects. The criminal justice system must protect the rights of defendants while also ensuring that complainants are treated fairly and respectfully.

The programme raises important questions about evidence, credibility, trauma and confidence in the justice process.

Another demanding assignment for Dooley, whose documentary work continues to cover an impressive range of subjects.

Thursday 22 October

Mercury Prize: Album of the Year — BBC Four, 9.30pm

The Mercury Prize returns to Newcastle, celebrating outstanding albums by British and Irish musicians.

Lauren Laverne hosts an evening featuring live performances from Florence + The Machine, Nia Archives, Kojey Radical, Olivia Dean, RAYE, Suede, JADE, Dove Ellis, Knats and Pulp, with the latter representing the charity album HELP(2).

This year’s shortlist also includes Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane, Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving and RAYE’s THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.

Last year’s winner was Sam Fender, another artist with strong connections to the North East.

There’s something pleasing about the continued importance of the album in a musical world increasingly dominated by individual tracks, algorithms and streaming playlists.

Albums allow musicians to develop themes and create a sustained artistic experience. They can be ambitious, personal, experimental and occasionally difficult. That’s part of their appeal.

The Mercury Prize has often helped introduce audiences to performers they might otherwise have overlooked, while recognising established musicians who continue to take risks.

With so many acts performing live, the event promises to be much more than an awards ceremony. It’s effectively a miniature festival celebrating the continuing vitality of contemporary music.

Sweat (2020) — Film4, 1.40am, early Friday

Directed by Magnus von Horn, this Polish-Swedish drama follows Sylwia, a successful fitness instructor and social media influencer.

She has hundreds of thousands of followers, a carefully constructed public image and apparently everything needed for a glamorous modern life.

Yet behind the motivational videos and polished appearances lies a woman experiencing profound loneliness.

Magdalena Koleśnik gives an absorbing performance as Sylwia, whose online confidence conceals insecurity and emotional vulnerability.

The film examines the strange contradictions of social media celebrity, where the appearance of intimacy can coexist with a lack of meaningful personal relationships.

It’s an intelligent and uncomfortable portrait of a world in which being constantly visible does not necessarily mean being understood.

Friday 23 October

Sicily: The Conquered Isle — PBS America, 7.10pm and 8.30pm

Two programmes explore the remarkable history of Sicily, an island whose strategic position in the Mediterranean has made it a crossroads of civilisations.

The first, Crossroads of the Mediterranean, examines its ancient past and the succession of peoples who fought to control it.

Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Normans all left their mark, creating a distinctive cultural inheritance visible in the island’s architecture, traditions and historical monuments.

The second programme, Borderlands, explores Sicily’s role in the nineteenth-century unification of Italy.

The island’s history demonstrates how geography can shape politics and culture over thousands of years.

For anyone interested in European history, this should be rewarding viewing.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) — Great Action, 9pm

Ang Lee’s drama follows a young American soldier who returns temporarily from Iraq after an act of battlefield heroism makes him a national celebrity.

Joe Alwyn plays Billy Lynn, whose experiences of combat contrast sharply with the patriotic spectacle organised around him.

The film examines the way soldiers are transformed into symbols and used to promote reassuring narratives about war.

Behind the ceremonies, applause and carefully staged celebrations lies a young man struggling with memories of violence and the reality of returning to combat.

Its anti-war message emerges from the gulf between public mythology and personal experience.

An interesting and thoughtful film about the exploitation of military heroism.

Disco Night — BBC Four, from 9.45pm; BBC iPlayer

BBC Four devotes the evening to disco, a musical movement that transformed popular culture.

For some, disco still conjures up images of mirror balls, extravagant clothing and dance-floor anthems. Yet its history is considerably more interesting than those familiar images suggest.

Emerging from Black, Latino and gay communities, particularly in American cities, disco became an expression of freedom, identity and collective enjoyment.

It also changed how records were produced, mixed and experienced.

The influence of disco can be heard throughout contemporary dance music, electronic pop and club culture.

A welcome opportunity to celebrate music that has sometimes been dismissed by critics who underestimated both its artistry and its cultural importance.

The Blackening (2022) — BBC Two, 11.30pm

This comedy horror follows a group of Black friends gathering at a remote woodland cabin to celebrate Juneteenth.

For British viewers unfamiliar with the occasion, Juneteenth commemorates 19 June 1865, when enslaved African Americans in Texas learned that emancipation was being enforced following the American Civil War. It has since become a major celebration of freedom and Black American history.

The film takes familiar horror conventions and turns them into a sharp comedy about race, stereotypes and representation.

One of its central jokes concerns the old horror-film convention in which Black characters are frequently among the first victims.

By placing an entirely Black group of friends at the centre of the story, the filmmakers gleefully undermine that convention.

The result is a mixture of horror, comedy and cultural satire.

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution — BBC Four, 12.15am, early Saturday

This documentary series explores disco’s origins, cultural significance and lasting influence.

Far from being merely a commercial musical craze, disco provided an important outlet for marginalised communities and helped create new spaces for social and personal expression.

Its history also involves the commercial music industry’s attempts to profit from an underground culture, and the backlash that followed its enormous success.

The opposition to disco sometimes carried racial and homophobic undertones, making its history inseparable from wider social struggles.

A valuable companion to BBC Four’s evening of disco celebrations.

I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol — Sky Arts, 1am, early Saturday

The emergence of the Sex Pistols in the mid-1970s helped transform British popular music and youth culture.

Their brief but explosive career challenged the musical establishment, attacked social conventions and gave expression to the anger and frustration of a generation.

Punk was never simply about musical ability or even musical style. It was also an attitude, a rejection of established hierarchies and an assertion that young people could create their own culture.

This documentary revisits that extraordinary moment and the personalities at its centre.

The Public Image Is Rotten — Sky Arts, 2.50am, early Saturday

John Lydon’s career did not end when the Sex Pistols disintegrated.

With Public Image Ltd, he moved into far more experimental musical territory, combining elements of post-punk, dub, electronic music and avant-garde experimentation.

This documentary examines the band’s turbulent history and Lydon’s determination to resist easy categorisation.

There’s an interesting contrast with BBC Four’s disco celebrations. Disco and punk were often treated as opposing movements, yet both challenged musical conventions and created new cultural possibilities.

Lydon has remained an abrasive and unpredictable figure, but Public Image Ltd’s contribution to the development of post-punk deserves recognition.

A suitably unconventional conclusion to the week’s musical television.

Netflix

Fading Grandeur — All six episodes available Friday 23 October

This Spanish comedy drama explores the tensions between appearance and reality, drawing upon the familiar attractions of family relationships, social embarrassment and personal ambition.

Spanish television has developed an impressive reputation for combining comedy and drama, often finding humour in situations that are far from comfortable.

A six-part series should provide enough room to develop its characters without unnecessarily stretching the story.

The New Stanford Prison Experiment — All six episodes available Wednesday 21 October

Does power corrupt?

That is the central question behind this new Netflix social experiment, which places thirty participants inside a real prison and randomly assigns them the roles of guards or prisoners.

The programme deliberately recalls the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in California in 1971.

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues recruited male college students and placed them in a simulated prison environment. Some were assigned the role of guards, others prisoners.

The study was supposed to last up to two weeks but was abandoned after just six days amid disturbing behaviour and psychological distress.

For many years, it was presented as evidence that ordinary people could rapidly become abusive when placed in positions of unchecked authority.

However, the original experiment has subsequently faced serious criticism. Researchers have questioned the way participants were instructed, the influence of expectations upon their behaviour and the validity of the conclusions drawn from the results.

The new Netflix programme uses a real prison setting, a mixed-gender group of participants and additional ethical safeguards.

It will be interesting to compare the findings with the original study, while remembering that this is also a television production intended to entertain.

Power certainly influences behaviour, but the relationship between authority, obedience and individual responsibility is more complicated than the old Stanford experiment sometimes suggested.

One of the week’s most intriguing streaming choices.

Judge John Deed — All 29 episodes available Saturday 17 October

Martin Shaw stars as Sir John Deed, a High Court judge whose determination to follow his conscience regularly brings him into conflict with the judicial establishment and political authorities.

Originally broadcast by the BBC between 2001 and 2007, the drama combines courtroom cases with political intrigue and personal complications.

Shaw brings considerable authority to the central role, making Deed an engaging if occasionally exasperating character.

The series is also interesting for its depiction of tensions between law, justice and institutional pressure.

Legal professionals may sometimes find themselves questioning the dramatic liberties taken with courtroom procedure, but the programme remains entertaining and frequently thought-provoking.

Channel 4 Streaming

Walter Presents: When the Night Comes — All six episodes available Friday 23 October

In an apparently idyllic seaside town, Stephanie wakes to the horrifying realisation that she has been raped in her own home.

The crime shatters her sense of security and exposes tensions beneath the community’s peaceful exterior.

The six-part drama explores the consequences of sexual violence, the search for truth and the difficulties faced by those attempting to rebuild their lives.

The Walter Presents collection continues to provide British viewers with access to international drama that might otherwise remain relatively unknown.

Its willingness to tackle demanding subjects has made it one of the most worthwhile streaming collections available.

Prime Video

The Last Viking — Available now

Anders Thomas Jensen directs this Danish black comedy starring Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkelsen.

Kaas plays Anker, a bank robber who entrusts stolen money to his brother Manfred before serving fifteen years in prison.

When Anker is finally released, he discovers that Manfred has developed serious psychiatric difficulties, believes himself to be John Lennon and no longer remembers where the money was hidden.

What follows is an increasingly bizarre attempt to recover the missing fortune.

Jensen has a gift for combining dark humour with damaged characters and unexpected emotional depth.

Mikkelsen is particularly well suited to this kind of material, bringing both intensity and comic unpredictability to his performances.

An unusual mixture of crime story, family drama and eccentric comedy.

BBC iPlayer

Smiley’s People — Available now

Sir Alec Guinness returns as George Smiley in this acclaimed BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s Cold War thriller, first broadcast in 1982.

Following the success of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the series once again immerses viewers in a world of espionage, deception, old loyalties and deeply compromised individuals.

Guinness’s performance is a masterclass in restraint. His Smiley is outwardly unremarkable, but beneath the quiet manner lies an extraordinary intelligence and a formidable capacity for investigation.

Unlike the glamorous spies of popular adventure fiction, le Carré’s characters inhabit a morally ambiguous world in which personal betrayal and political calculation are inseparable.

One of the finest achievements of British television drama, and a perfect companion to this week’s Radio 4 Extra adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Alex Jones: Un Diwrnod yn Aberfan (One Day in Aberfan) — Available Sunday 18 October

This Welsh-language programme forms part of the commemorations marking sixty years since the Aberfan disaster.

On 21 October 1966, a collapsing colliery spoil tip engulfed Pantglas Junior School and surrounding houses, killing 144 people, including 116 children.

The tragedy remains a defining moment in the history of Welsh mining communities.

Commemorative programmes such as this are particularly important because they preserve personal memories and ensure that the experiences of those affected are not reduced to statistics.

The disaster also raises enduring questions about industrial responsibility, the treatment of working-class communities and the failure of powerful institutions to listen to warnings.

An essential companion to Monday’s BBC Two documentary, Aberfan: The Village That Fought Back.

Paramount+

Treasure Island — Episode 2 available Monday 19 October

The latest adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure features David Oyelowo as Long John Silver.

The original novel remains one of the defining works of adventure fiction, introducing generations of readers to pirates, buried treasure, betrayal and the dangerous attraction of the high seas.

Long John Silver is the story’s great achievement: charismatic, resourceful, manipulative and morally ambiguous.

A successful adaptation needs to capture both his charm and the threat concealed beneath it.

Oyelowo is an interesting choice for the role, and the series offers an opportunity to introduce Stevenson’s enduring characters to another generation.

HBO Max

The Narco Hack — All three episodes available Friday 23 October

This three-part documentary tells the extraordinary story of Sky ECC, an encrypted messaging service that became popular among organised crime networks.

The attraction was simple. Subscribers believed that their communications were protected by encryption powerful enough to prevent the authorities from reading their messages.

For criminal organisations, that apparent security made it possible to conduct business with a confidence that would otherwise have been impossible.

In 2021, however, investigators led by French authorities succeeded in compromising the system, exposing communications that provided unprecedented insights into criminal networks.

The documentary examines the technological operation and its consequences.

It’s a fascinating illustration of the increasingly sophisticated struggle between organised crime and law enforcement, as well as the wider questions raised by encrypted communications, privacy and surveillance.

Radio

Sunday 18 October

Childline — BBC Radio 4, 1.30pm

Forty years after Esther Rantzen launched Childline in 1986, this programme examines the organisation’s remarkable history.

Childline was founded upon a simple but enormously important principle: children experiencing abuse, distress or fear needed somewhere they could turn for confidential support.

In the decades that followed, the service helped countless young people who might otherwise have remained unheard.

The programme has acquired additional poignancy following Rantzen’s death in September.

She was an influential broadcaster, but her work establishing Childline may prove to be her most enduring achievement.

It’s a reminder that the value of a public life is not simply measured by celebrity or professional success, but by the practical difference someone makes to others.

A fitting tribute to an important legacy.

The Mysterious Case of Annie Elizabeth — BBC Radio 4, 7.15pm

For history enthusiasts, this intriguing programme investigates the story behind Annie Elizabeth, a variety of apple with an unusually personal name.

Who was Annie Elizabeth, and why did an apple come to bear her name?

It’s the kind of apparently obscure historical question that can lead to unexpected discoveries about the people and communities of the past.

There is something rather appealing about the way ordinary objects can preserve human stories long after the people involved have disappeared.

A gentle but potentially fascinating piece of historical detective work.

Monday 19 October

Book of the Week: Stalin’s Apostles — BBC Radio 4, 11.45am; late repeat 12.30am

An adaptation of Antonia Senior’s book about the Cambridge Five spy ring.

Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross became Soviet agents despite occupying positions of considerable privilege within British society.

Their activities exposed the vulnerability of an establishment that relied heavily upon personal connections, class background and assumptions about loyalty.

The story remains fascinating because it involves conflicting allegiances, ideological conviction, personal ambition and extraordinary betrayal.

It also provides an interesting historical companion to our television and streaming selections featuring John le Carré’s fictional world of espionage.

How Houdini Made Magic with Derren Brown — BBC Radio 4, Monday to Friday, 1.45pm

Derren Brown examines the life and extraordinary achievements of Harry Houdini, one of the most celebrated entertainers of the twentieth century.

Houdini became famous for his astonishing escapes from handcuffs, locked containers and seemingly impossible situations.

Yet his achievements were not simply physical feats. They also relied upon psychology, showmanship, misdirection and an understanding of audience expectations.

Perhaps most interestingly, Houdini later became a determined critic of fraudulent spiritualists, exposing techniques used to convince grieving people that mediums could communicate with the dead.

Brown is an ideal guide, possessing both practical knowledge of illusion and a fascination with the psychology of belief.

A promising series about entertainment, deception and the boundary between what we see and what we think we see.

The Essay: John Foxx — Key Moments — BBC Radio 3, 9.45pm

John Foxx, the original frontman of Ultravox, reflects upon five pianos that have played important roles in his life.

Foxx was a significant figure in the emergence of British electronic music, helping establish the foundations of what later became known as synth-pop and new wave.

After leaving Ultravox, he developed a distinctive solo career, combining electronic experimentation with atmospheric, often introspective songwriting.

His reflections upon the piano offer an interesting contrast with his reputation as an electronic music pioneer.

The relationship between traditional musical instruments and modern technology has always been more complicated than the familiar opposition between acoustic and electronic music suggests.

For those interested in the development of modern British popular music, this should be particularly rewarding.

Tuesday 20 October

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — BBC Radio 4 Extra, 6am, 11am and 5pm

A radio adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 Cold War thriller.

George Smiley is drawn out of retirement to investigate the possibility that a Soviet mole has infiltrated the highest levels of British intelligence.

The story is a masterpiece of deception, suspicion and psychological investigation.

Its world is far removed from the glamorous adventures of James Bond. Le Carré’s spies are frequently tired, disappointed and morally compromised individuals operating within bureaucratic institutions.

This adaptation was originally broadcast in 1988, nine years after the celebrated BBC television version starring Alec Guinness.

With Smiley’s People also available on BBC iPlayer this week, there is an opportunity to explore two of le Carré’s finest stories in different formats.

His novels remain among the most intelligent examinations of espionage, loyalty and betrayal ever written for a popular audience.

Final Thoughts

There is a particularly strong historical and political thread running through this week’s choices.

Aberfan reminds us of the terrible consequences of institutional negligence and the determination of ordinary people to secure justice. Selma examines the struggle for civil rights, while Ernest Cole: Lost and Found demonstrates the power of photography to expose oppression.

The Day the Earth Stood Still and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk approach the subjects of war and peace from very different directions. Both invite us to question the comforting narratives that societies construct around violence.

Meanwhile, The New Stanford Prison Experiment and Channel 4’s The Experiment ask questions about power, authority and human behaviour.

Music is particularly well served, from the harmonies of the Everly Brothers to the experimental work of John Foxx, the Mercury Prize, disco and punk.

And there’s plenty of room for entertainment that makes fewer demands: Hitchcock’s magnificent North by Northwest, Edgar Wright’s comedies and the eccentric delights of The Addams Family.

That’s what makes a good week’s viewing. There should be opportunities to learn, to think, to be challenged and, occasionally, simply to enjoy ourselves.

Enjoy the week.

Selections and reviews by Pat Harrington

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The Mentalist, Season One, Episode Four: When Greed Becomes the Deadliest Motive

October 10, 2026 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Netflix, Streaming ·Tagged Crime Series Review, Ladies in Red, Patrick Jane, Psychological Thriller, Teresa Lisbon, The Mentalist Season 1, The Mentalist, TV Crime Drama

Contains spoilers!

After three episodes largely driven by passion, jealousy and personal desperation, The Mentalist takes a different turn with “Ladies in Red”. The fourth outing of the series leaves behind crimes of impulse and enters a world where wealth, influence and financial self-interest shape every interaction. It is a clever shift in emphasis. Instead of asking what people will do for love, the episode asks what they will do for money, status and self-preservation.

The result is one of the strongest early instalments of the first season.

The case begins with the discovery of wealthy banker Bruce Winter, found dead inside his own wine-cellar vault. It is the sort of opening that instantly captures attention. The image itself is loaded with symbolism. A room designed to protect valuable possessions becomes the setting for murder, suggesting from the outset that Winter’s carefully maintained world was far less secure than it appeared.

As the California Bureau of Investigation starts digging, the dead banker proves to have accumulated more than money during his lifetime. He has collected grudges, enemies, resentments and secrets. Relationships have frayed beneath the surface, business dealings appear increasingly questionable and those closest to him seem to be hiding as much as they are revealing. What initially appears to be a straightforward locked-room mystery gradually unfolds into something considerably messier.

One of the episode’s strengths lies in its portrayal of dishonesty. Almost everyone Jane interviews is lying, but not in the panicked way seen in previous cases. These are polished lies. Practised lies. The kind told by people accustomed to protecting reputations, investments and social standing.

That distinction matters.

Patrick Jane excels when faced with people who believe they are smarter than everyone else in the room. Wealthy suspects often assume their money, influence or sophistication gives them a natural advantage. In reality, those assumptions make them vulnerable. Jane understands that beneath every carefully crafted public image sits an ordinary human being carrying the same fears and weaknesses as everyone else.

Throughout the investigation, he barely concerns himself with appearances. While others focus on statements and alibis, Jane watches reactions. A pause that lasts half a second too long. A smile that arrives at the wrong moment. A contradiction that seems insignificant until it is placed alongside three others.

What makes Jane compelling is that he approaches crime almost entirely through behaviour. To him, people are puzzles long before evidence becomes one.

The women connected to Bruce Winter form another key part of the episode’s structure. The title, “Ladies in Red”, initially suggests glamour and elegance. Instead, it gradually reveals a network of complicated personal and financial relationships surrounding the victim.

Winter’s wife presents the image of composure while carrying years of resentment beneath the surface. His mistress exists in a relationship complicated by dependence and power imbalance. Other women connected to his business and financial affairs demonstrate how personal loyalties become entangled with money. The episode avoids painting these characters as simple stereotypes. Instead, it presents them as individuals navigating a world built around a wealthy man whose influence extended into almost every corner of their lives.

What emerges is a portrait of relationships turned transactional. Affection, loyalty and trust have all become commodities. Nobody seems entirely innocent, but neither does anyone feel entirely straightforwardly guilty.

At the centre of everything sits the vault itself.

The locked-room mystery is a familiar television device, but The Mentalist uses it effectively because Jane never treats it as a mechanical puzzle. He is less interested in how someone got into the room than why events unfolded the way they did.

Most detectives would begin by examining locks, entry points and security systems. Jane begins with motive.

Who benefited from Winter’s death?

Who understood his routines?

Who had enough access to manipulate him?

Who believed they could get away with it?

By approaching the question from a psychological direction rather than a forensic one, the episode transforms what could have been a standard puzzle into something richer. The solution grows naturally out of character rather than circumstance.

Away from Jane, Teresa Lisbon continues her steady evolution into one of the show’s most important figures. It would be easy for a character in her position to function merely as a sounding board for the lead investigator, but the series avoids that trap.

Here she spends much of the episode balancing competing pressures. Wealthy suspects attempt to exert influence. Powerful associates expect special treatment. Jane continues to ignore conventional investigative methods whenever it suits him.

Lisbon’s role is to hold everything together.

The growing dynamic between the two leads remains one of the show’s greatest assets. Jane provides chaos, uncertainty and intuition. Lisbon supplies discipline, structure and credibility. Neither would be nearly as effective without the other.

The supporting members of the CBI team continue to settle comfortably into their roles as well. Kimball Cho’s dry, understated interviewing style works particularly well against the arrogance displayed by several suspects. While others become impressed or irritated by displays of wealth, Cho remains refreshingly indifferent. Wayne Rigsby brings warmth and humour, often voicing the same disbelief many viewers feel when watching Jane’s elaborate schemes unfold. Grace Van Pelt, meanwhile, encounters a case that challenges some of her more idealistic assumptions. The investigation demonstrates that respectability and integrity are not necessarily the same thing.

Thematically, greed sits at the heart of everything.

Financial fraud, hidden investments, secret accounts and compromised business partnerships all feed into the central mystery. Yet the episode wisely refuses to treat greed purely as a desire for money. Instead, it presents greed as a broader appetite for control. Characters cling desperately to status, influence, reputation and security, even when doing so creates the conditions for disaster.

That idea proves more interesting than a simple murder motive.

Bruce Winter’s world is populated by people terrified of losing what they have built. Some fear financial ruin. Others fear exposure. A few fear humiliation more than either. The murder becomes the inevitable consequence of individuals placing self-interest above honesty.

When the final reveal arrives, it perfectly captures what makes The Mentalist work at its best. There is no dramatic chase, no sudden gunfight and no exaggerated twist designed purely for shock value. Instead, Jane carefully assembles the truth piece by piece before placing the killer in a position where guilt becomes impossible to hide.

The scene depends on psychology rather than spectacle.

Jane’s explanation is devastating precisely because of how calmly it is delivered. He understands not only what happened but why it happened. In doing so, he strips away the layers of deception that the killer has spent the entire episode constructing.

“Ladies in Red” ultimately represents an important step forward for the series. It demonstrates that The Mentalist is capable of handling more than emotionally charged domestic tragedies. Corporate corruption, financial crime, class privilege and social manipulation all fit comfortably within the show’s framework.

Just as importantly, it deepens our understanding of Patrick Jane himself. Beneath the charm and theatricality is a man with a remarkable understanding of power and the damage it can cause. He recognises that wealth often provides people with better masks, not better morals. In a world where everyone is trying to control the narrative, Jane remains dangerous because he sees the story underneath.

Four episodes in, The Mentalist is already showing signs of becoming something more than a conventional crime procedural. “Ladies in Red” is one of the earliest indications that beneath its murder-of-the-week structure lies a series genuinely interested in the weaknesses that drive human behaviour. Money simply happens to be the weakness under the microscope this time.

By Christopher Storton

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East of Eden Review: The Sins of the Parents

October 9, 2026 at 12:12 pm · Filed under Netflix, Streaming ·Tagged Drama Series, East of Eden, East of Eden Review, Florence Pugh, John Steinbeck, Literary Adaptation, Netflix Drama, TV Review

Some stories last because they find a way of speaking to every generation. The setting changes, the fashions come and go, but the questions remain stubbornly familiar. How much of our lives are shaped by the families we come from? Can people really escape the mistakes of the past? Are we free to become something different, or are we condemned to repeat patterns laid down long before we were born?

Those questions sit at the heart of East of Eden, and they are what make this new television adaptation feel remarkably fresh despite the age of the source material. Rather than treating John Steinbeck’s novel as a literary monument to be admired from a distance, the series approaches it as a living story about family, identity and the consequences of human choices. The result is a drama that feels both timeless and surprisingly modern.

Many viewers will arrive with memories of the famous 1955 film and its enduring association with James Dean. That version left a powerful mark on popular culture, but it inevitably compressed Steinbeck’s sprawling novel into something more focused and contained. This series has the luxury of breathing space. It allows characters to develop gradually, relationships to evolve and tensions to simmer rather than explode immediately. The benefit of that approach becomes clear very quickly.

At the centre of everything stands Cathy Ames, one of the most fascinating and unsettling figures in American literature. Adaptations often struggle with characters like Cathy because there is a temptation to explain them, soften them or fit them into a framework that audiences can comfortably understand. This series wisely resists that instinct.

Cathy remains elusive throughout. At times she appears wounded and vulnerable. At others she displays an astonishing capacity for manipulation and self-preservation. The contradictions are the point. Human beings are rarely as straightforward as we would like them to be, and Cathy serves as a reminder that some people refuse to conform to the categories imposed upon them by others.

What makes the character particularly compelling here is the way the drama examines the world surrounding her. The story never asks viewers to excuse destructive behaviour, but it does encourage them to consider the circumstances that shape it. Power, dependence, status and survival all become part of the picture. The result is a portrayal that is far richer than a simple battle between good and evil.

The men around Cathy are equally important to the story’s success. Adam Trask emerges as a fundamentally decent man whose greatest weakness may be his faith in the goodness of others. He wants to believe the best of people. It is an admirable quality until reality begins to challenge it. There is something quietly tragic about watching a person cling to an idealised view of the world long after events have demonstrated that such certainty may be misplaced.

Charles Trask provides an effective counterbalance. While Adam sees possibility, Charles often sees danger. He is driven by insecurities that have accumulated over years, particularly the suspicion that affection and approval have always been given more freely to his brother. His anger frequently masks deeper feelings of rejection and loneliness. In lesser hands the character could easily become one-dimensional. Instead, he emerges as one of the most sympathetic figures in the series.

As the story passes from one generation to the next, the same conflicts begin to reappear in new forms. Parents leave emotional legacies they never intended to create. Children struggle beneath expectations they never chose. Rivalries develop. Old resentments resurface. The details differ, but the underlying problems remain recognisable.

That is one reason East of Eden continues to resonate. Its biblical influences are impossible to miss, yet the drama never feels like a theological exercise. At its core it is about families. Most viewers will recognise elements of their own lives somewhere within these relationships. Few people have experienced the level of turmoil depicted here, but almost everyone understands the desire for approval, the pain of disappointment or the burden of living up to expectations.

Perhaps the novel’s most enduring idea is the belief that inheritance is not destiny. The past matters. Family history matters. The choices made by earlier generations leave their mark. Yet individuals are never entirely trapped by what came before. They still possess the ability to make decisions, change direction and choose different paths.

The series returns repeatedly to that tension. Characters make mistakes, sometimes catastrophic ones. They inflict damage on themselves and on others. Yet the possibility of redemption never completely disappears. That possibility gives the story much of its emotional weight. Without it, the drama would be bleak. With it, there remains hope even in the darkest moments.

The production itself is impressive. There is a confidence to the visual storytelling that helps distinguish it from much contemporary streaming television. Expansive landscapes create a sense of scale, while quieter scenes focus on the emotional fractures within families. The world feels inhabited rather than decorated. Costumes, locations and design choices support the story without constantly drawing attention to themselves.

Not every element works perfectly. There are occasions when the pacing slows and certain supporting storylines receive more attention than they perhaps deserve. Given the sheer size of the source novel, however, some unevenness was always likely. Compressing a work of this scope into a single television production is no easy task.

What ultimately matters is that the adaptation understands what makes Steinbeck’s novel endure. It is not the plot mechanics. It is not the period setting. It is not even the famous literary references. The lasting power comes from its understanding of people.

Life is complicated. Families are complicated. Love, resentment, guilt and forgiveness frequently exist side by side. Individuals carry the influence of the past while trying to create a future of their own. Those realities remain just as true today as they were when Steinbeck first put them on the page.

In an age where so much television disappears from memory almost as soon as the credits roll, East of Eden stands out because it has something meaningful to say. It trusts its audience to wrestle with difficult questions. It accepts that people can be contradictory. Most importantly, it recognises that the struggle between who we are and who we might become is one that never really ends.

That is why the story continues to matter. The setting belongs to another era. The human dilemmas do not.

By Mia Fulga

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The Mentalist, Season 1 Episode 3: Red Tide Review

October 7, 2026 at 7:06 am · Filed under Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged crime drama, Patrick Jane, Red Tide, Simon Baker, Teresa Lisbon, The Mentalist Season 1 Episode 3, The Mentalist, TV Review

Spoilers!

One of the smartest decisions The Mentalist makes early in its run is refusing to treat murder as a puzzle alone.

Many procedural dramas are ultimately interested in mechanics. A body appears. Clues are collected. Suspects are interviewed. A culprit is identified. Case closed.

Red Tide, the third episode of the series, understands that crime rarely begins with logic. More often, it begins with emotion.

Fear. Jealousy. Loneliness. Anger. The desperate need to belong.

Set against the sun-drenched backdrop of California’s surfing culture, Red Tide exchanges the vineyards and small-town politics of the previous episode for a world of teenagers, secrets and shifting loyalties. It is a quieter hour than the pilot or Red Hair and Silver Tape, lacking a larger-than-life antagonist or dramatic set pieces, but it compensates with atmosphere and emotional intelligence.

The result is one of the first episodes that reveals the real strength of The Mentalist: its understanding of people.

The case begins when the body of a teenage girl named Kelly is discovered washed up on a beach. The tragedy sends shockwaves through her close-knit surfing community, yet the response from her friends immediately feels unusual. There is grief, certainly, but also hesitation. Conversations end abruptly. Eyes shift nervously. Information is withheld.

Patrick Jane notices it immediately.

As always, Simon Baker makes observation feel more interesting than action. Jane arrives at a scene and sees patterns not in physical evidence but in behaviour. While others search for fingerprints and motives, he studies reactions. His attention drifts not to what people are saying but to what they are desperately trying not to say.

This approach is particularly effective among teenagers.

Adults, when they lie, often have a strategy. Teenagers rarely do.

Their lies emerge from panic. Embarrassment. Loyalty to friends. Fear of authority. Fear of exclusion.

Red Tide understands this distinction and builds its investigation around it.

Rather than treating the young suspects like criminals, Jane treats them like confused adolescents caught in circumstances beyond their control. It is one of the earliest examples of the show’s empathy, and one of the reasons Patrick Jane remains such an engaging character.

He never talks down to them.

He doesn’t try desperately to appear younger than he is. He doesn’t force trust. He simply listens.

There’s a natural ease to the way Jane moves through the surfing community. He sits with the teenagers, asks seemingly casual questions and quietly observes the social currents moving beneath every interaction.

Soon, a familiar pattern emerges.

There are leaders and followers.

There are insiders and outsiders.

There are those who are confident and those terrified of losing their place within the group. Like a detective mapping a crime scene, Jane maps relationships. The episode becomes less about solving a murder and more about understanding a community.

That community is beautifully realised. The surfers could easily have become stereotypes, but the writing gives them just enough depth to feel authentic. They are impulsive and emotional, but also vulnerable. Their friendships feel real. Their fears feel real. Even their silences reveal something important.

The beach setting helps enormously.

The California coastline has often been romanticised in film and television as a place of freedom, youth and possibility. Red Tide cleverly uses that imagery while revealing the tension lurking underneath. Beneath the open skies and crashing waves is a network of secrets held together by fragile trust.

The atmosphere is one of the episode’s greatest achievements.

There is a melancholy quality running through the story. The sea seems less a symbol of freedom than a reminder of uncertainty. Relationships drift. Reputations shift. Certainties disappear.

For a series best known for its wit, Red Tide is surprisingly thoughtful.

The episode also benefits from its portrayal of parents.

While the teenagers hide their fears from authority, the adults struggle with a different problem altogether: understanding the lives their children lead when nobody is watching.

Some parents are protective. Others appear distracted. Some are simply overwhelmed.

What unites them is a sense of helplessness.

The adults believe they know their children. The investigation gradually reveals how incomplete that understanding really is.

This tension between parents and children becomes one of the episode’s central themes. The emotional intensity of teenage life is frequently underestimated by adults. Relationships that seem trivial from the outside can feel all-consuming to the people experiencing them.

Jane recognises this.

Where others dismiss youthful feelings as melodrama, he treats them seriously.

That empathy becomes his greatest investigative tool.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Red Tide is how gentle Jane’s methods are compared with previous episodes. There are fewer elaborate psychological traps and fewer moments of public humiliation for suspects. Instead, he works quietly, creating opportunities for people to tell the truth.

A conversation on a beach.

A carefully timed question.

A moment of silence that encourages somebody to keep talking.

Jane understands that frightened people often reveal more when they feel safe than when they feel pressured.

It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.

The episode effectively demonstrates that Patrick Jane’s gift is not manipulation alone. It is understanding.

Robin Tunney’s Teresa Lisbon continues to develop impressively alongside him.

In many episodes, Lisbon serves as the practical counterbalance to Jane’s instincts, but Red Tide highlights another side of her personality. She is deeply protective, particularly when dealing with young people. Her priority is not simply closing the case but ensuring vulnerable teenagers are treated fairly throughout the investigation.

Tunney brings warmth to moments that could easily feel procedural.

Lisbon recognises the emotional damage surrounding the case and responds with a level of compassion that distinguishes her from many television detectives. Her willingness to trust Jane’s methods while maintaining clear boundaries continues to define one of television’s most enjoyable partnerships.

There is still friction between them.

There always will be.

Yet every episode strengthens the sense that they need one another. Jane supplies insight. Lisbon provides structure. Together they create a balance neither could achieve alone.

The eventual solution to the murder avoids sensationalism, which feels entirely appropriate.

This is not the story of a criminal mastermind or a calculated predator. Instead, it is a tragedy born from emotional instability, poor decisions and consequences that spiral beyond anyone’s control.

The revelation lands not because it is shocking but because it is sad.

That sadness lingers.

It reminds us that many crimes emerge not from evil but from ordinary human weakness.

By the time the credits roll, Red Tide has accomplished something deceptively difficult. It delivers a compelling mystery while deepening our understanding of Patrick Jane, Teresa Lisbon and the emotional foundations of the series itself.

The episode may not be among the most famous entries in The Mentalist’s seven-season run, but it remains one of its most quietly effective.

Atmospheric, compassionate and psychologically astute, Red Tide demonstrates that the series is at its best when it looks beyond the crime and focuses on the people left in its wake.

Sometimes solving a murder is the easy part.

Understanding why it happened is where the real story begins.

Reviewed by Chris Storton

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The Mentalist, Season 1 Episode 2: Red Hair and Silver Tape Review

October 5, 2026 at 8:23 am · Filed under Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged CBS Drama, crime drama, Patrick Jane, Red Hair and Silver Tape, Simon Baker, Teresa Lisbon, The Mentalist, TV Review

Spoliers!

There is always a moment when a television series stops introducing itself and starts showing you what it can do.

For The Mentalist, that moment arrives surprisingly early. The pilot episode had the difficult task of establishing Patrick Jane’s tragic history, introducing the California Bureau of Investigation, and planting the shadow of Red John over everything that followed. Red Hair and Silver Tape, however, serves a different purpose. Rather than relying on personal trauma or overarching mythology, it asks a simple question: can The Mentalist deliver a compelling murder mystery every week?

The answer is an emphatic yes.

The episode opens in California wine country, where the body of a young waitress named Kimberly has been discovered among the vineyards. On the surface, the case appears straightforward. A young woman, a boyfriend with motives for jealousy, and circumstances suggesting a romantic encounter that ended in violence. Local Sheriff Hardy is more than ready to close the book before it has truly been opened.

Patrick Jane, naturally, sees things differently.

What immediately becomes apparent is how much the series depends on Simon Baker’s performance. Jane is not a detective in any traditional sense. He gathers information not through forensic detail or procedural expertise but through observation. He studies people. He listens. He notices what others dismiss as irrelevant.

A glance that lasts too long.

A smile that arrives a fraction too late.

A story that sounds correct but somehow feels wrong.

Where most crime dramas begin with evidence, Jane begins with behaviour.

That distinction gives The Mentalist its unique identity.

The beauty of Red Hair and Silver Tape lies in its restraint. Modern crime dramas often feel compelled to raise the stakes with serial killers, conspiracies, or increasingly elaborate crimes. This episode remains refreshingly grounded. There is no grand villain lurking in the shadows and no world-changing revelation waiting around the corner. Instead, the mystery unfolds through ordinary human flaws: jealousy, deception, fear, insecurity, and selfishness.

The result is a story that feels more believable than many of its contemporaries.

A large part of the episode’s success comes from the ongoing friction between Jane and Sheriff Hardy. Hardy represents conventional law enforcement thinking. He values certainty, authority, and clear conclusions. Once he decides on a suspect, every piece of evidence is viewed through that lens.

Jane operates in exactly the opposite way.

He is suspicious of certainty. He questions assumptions. Most importantly, he refuses to let authority dictate truth.

Their conflict generates much of the episode’s humour. Hardy views Jane as an irritating outsider who undermines his investigation. Jane treats Hardy’s confidence with barely concealed amusement. Yet beneath the banter sits a larger theme running throughout the hour: the danger of believing what you want to believe.

Hardy’s greatest weakness is not incompetence.

It is pride.

Again and again, the episode demonstrates how ego can blind people to reality. By contrast, Jane’s strength comes from his willingness to admit that first impressions are often wrong.

That theme extends beyond Hardy and into the wider investigation.

As the team interviews suspects and witnesses, layers begin to peel away from Kimberly’s life. Friends hide details. Colleagues conceal uncomfortable truths. Romantic relationships prove more complicated than they first appear. Nobody is entirely honest, but neither is everybody malicious. The episode understands an important truth about human behaviour: people lie for many reasons.

Sometimes they lie to protect themselves.

Sometimes they lie to avoid embarrassment.

Sometimes they lie because the truth is simply too painful.

Jane navigates these deceptions with remarkable ease, not because he possesses supernatural abilities, but because he understands human nature better than most people understand themselves.

One of the show’s recurring pleasures is watching him construct psychological traps. Unlike detectives who corner suspects with evidence boards and interrogation rooms, Jane creates situations that encourage people to reveal themselves voluntarily. The guilty often expose themselves because they cannot resist reacting.

Simon Baker plays these moments beautifully. There is an effortless charm to Jane’s manipulations that makes them entertaining rather than sinister. He remains a difficult character to classify. At times he is a detective. At others he resembles a stage magician, a therapist, a conman, or an actor performing a role.

Often, he is all four simultaneously.

The episode also gives Grace Van Pelt one of her earliest opportunities to step forward.

Amanda Righetti’s character is still finding her place within the team, but Red Hair and Silver Tape establishes qualities that will become increasingly important throughout the season. When Jane proposes using her as bait to draw out the killer, the plan creates genuine tension. It is a risky strategy, and Lisbon is understandably uncomfortable with it.

Yet Van Pelt agrees.

The decision reveals courage, commitment, and confidence beneath her relatively inexperienced exterior. More importantly, it begins to establish trust between Van Pelt and Jane. She may not fully understand his methods, but she is beginning to appreciate the results.

The sequence itself is handled with impressive restraint. Rather than relying on action-movie theatrics, the tension emerges from uncertainty. The audience understands the danger lurking beneath the surface, making every moment feel slightly unpredictable.

Meanwhile, Robin Tunney continues to quietly define Teresa Lisbon.

If Baker is the show’s engine, Tunney is its stabilising force.

Lisbon occupies an unenviable position. She must manage Jane’s increasingly unconventional methods while maintaining professional credibility and ensuring the safety of her team. It would be easy for the character to become little more than an exasperated supervisor rolling her eyes at Jane’s antics, but the writing gives her greater depth than that.

What emerges is a leader capable of recognising brilliance while remaining aware of its consequences.

Her growing partnership with Jane remains one of the strongest aspects of the series. There is already an unmistakable chemistry between them, built not on romance but on mutual respect. Jane frustrates her endlessly. Lisbon questions his judgement. Yet she trusts him more than she would ever openly admit.

That relationship forms the emotional spine of the show.

What makes Red Hair and Silver Tape particularly significant is that it demonstrates how effectively The Mentalist can function without leaning on Red John. The series mythology adds depth and long-term intrigue, but this episode proves that the weekly mysteries are strong enough to stand on their own.

By the closing scenes, it is clear that the show has found its rhythm.

The mystery is clever without becoming convoluted. The characters continue to grow. The humour lands naturally. Most importantly, Patrick Jane remains endlessly fascinating to watch. Every investigation becomes less about discovering who committed the crime and more about seeing how Jane will uncover the truth.

That distinction elevates The Mentalist above many of its procedural contemporaries.

Red Hair and Silver Tape may not be the most famous episode of the series, but it is arguably one of the most important. It establishes the formula that would sustain the show for years while demonstrating why audiences were drawn to Patrick Jane in the first place.

Sharp, engaging and quietly intelligent, it confirms that the pilot was no fluke.

The game, as Jane might say, is officially underway.

Reviewed by Chris Storton

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Culture Vulture 12–18 September 2026

September 11, 2026 at 11:23 am · Filed under BBC, Music, Netflix, Streaming, TV Shows, Walter Presents ·Tagged film, Film Reviews, movies, Netflix, TV guide, TV reviews

There is plenty to get stuck into this week, but three things stand out. The Last Night of the Proms remains one of those great television occasions, even if you normally only dip into classical music. England Till I Die looks like the most potentially unsettling piece of factual television, following an East Sussex anti-immigration activist over nine months. And film-wise, it is hard to look past The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger’s extraordinary 1948 masterpiece, still looking and feeling unlike almost anything else.

There is strong music programming too, with Chaka Khan and Simple Minds headlining Radio 2 in the Park, while BBC Four gives Friday night over to the Rolling Stones. Film4 supplies plenty across the week, and the streaming services offer a mix of crime, dystopia, politics and dysfunctional spies.

Saturday 12 September

The Red Shoes — 9.50am, BBC Two (1948)

Powell and Pressburger at full voltage: colour as emotion, movement as destiny, and a story that understands, with unnerving clarity, the price artists sometimes pay for brilliance. The film opens with a kind of deceptive lightness — the bustle of students, the chatter of rehearsal rooms — but even in those early scenes there’s a sense of something larger gathering, a tension between ordinary life and the pull of the stage.

Moira Shearer’s Vicky Page is one of those performances that seems to glow from within. She’s young, ambitious, and utterly sincere, and the film treats her not as a symbol but as a person caught between two forces: the joy of creation and the demands of those who claim ownership over it. Anton Walbrook’s Lermontov, all icy poise and implacable will, becomes the gravitational centre of the film. He doesn’t shout, he doesn’t threaten; he simply expects the world to bend to his vision. And in the world of The Red Shoes, that expectation is almost enough to make it happen.

The famous ballet sequence — still astonishing, still unmatched — feels like cinema stepping into another dimension. It’s not a filmed performance; it’s a dream, a hallucination, a manifesto. Powell and Pressburger let the stage dissolve into pure imagination, and for a few minutes you’re watching something that doesn’t seem bound by the usual rules of filmmaking. It’s the moment where the film declares, without hesitation, that art can be overwhelming, intoxicating, and dangerous.

What follows is inevitable, tragic, and strangely beautiful. The film isn’t moralising; it isn’t wagging a finger about ambition. It’s simply honest about the cost. For some people, the choice between life and art isn’t a choice at all — and The Red Shoes understands that with a kind of terrible sympathy.

A masterpiece, yes, but more than that: a film that still feels alive, still capable of unsettling you, still able to make you think about the things you love and what they demand in return.

Lawrence of Arabia — 1.30pm, BBC Two (1962)

Lean’s desert epic isn’t just large‑scale cinema — it’s cinema that seems to expand as you watch it, pushing outward into myth, psychology and the uneasy glamour of heroism. The first thing that strikes you is the sheer physical beauty of it: the desert not as backdrop but as a kind of vast, indifferent character, swallowing men, ambitions and empires without distinction. Freddie Young’s cinematography gives the landscape a monumental stillness, and Lean lets that stillness interrogate the people moving through it.

At the centre is Peter O’Toole, incandescent and unsettling. His Lawrence is not a straightforward adventurer but a man drawn to extremes — extremes of courage, extremes of self‑invention, extremes of delusion. O’Toole plays him with a kind of brittle radiance, as if the performance itself is lit from inside. You see the charisma, the intelligence, the recklessness, and the slow, painful recognition that the legend he’s building is also consuming him.

The film’s sweep is extraordinary, but what makes it endure is its ambivalence. It understands the seduction of grand narratives — the lone visionary, the desert campaign, the forging of alliances — but it also understands the cost. Lean never lets the spectacle drown out the politics or the psychology. The triumphs feel real, but so do the fractures, the betrayals, the dawning sense that Lawrence’s story is as much about the limits of empire as the possibilities of individual will.

Long, certainly. Magnificent, unquestionably. But more than that: a film that still feels like a challenge — to the viewer, to history, and to the idea of heroism itself.

Rosaline — 3pm, Film4 (2022)

A playful spin on Romeo and Juliet, yes, but what makes Rosaline interesting is the way it quietly punctures the solemnity that usually clings to Verona. By shifting the frame to Romeo’s overlooked ex, the film exposes the fragile architecture of the “great romance” — how much of it is timing, how much is teenage melodrama, and how much is simply who gets written into the centre of the story.

Kaitlyn Dever’s Rosaline is sharp, wounded, and wonderfully unimpressed by the myth-making around her. Through her eyes, the familiar beats of Shakespeare’s tragedy become something closer to a comedy of misplaced certainty. The film doesn’t mock the original; it just recognises that the intensity of first love can look very different once you’re no longer the one swept up in it.

There’s a breezy confidence to the whole thing — modern without being smug, affectionate without being reverent. And beneath the jokes, there’s a small but sincere point: change the narrator, and the legend shifts. The story you thought you knew becomes something else entirely.

Vera Cruz — 6.35pm, 5 Action (1954)

Aldrich’s Vera Cruz is one of those westerns that feels like it’s already leaning toward the genre’s darker future — cynical, sharp‑edged, and amused by its own ruthlessness. Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster make a terrific, uneasy pairing: Cooper with that worn, moral gravity he carried so naturally, Lancaster all swagger, teeth and opportunism. They’re heading south not for honour or destiny but for profit, and the film never pretends otherwise.

What’s striking is how modern the tone feels. The Mexican setting isn’t treated as exotic backdrop; it’s a political landscape full of shifting loyalties, revolutionaries, mercenaries and people trying to survive the chaos. Aldrich shoots it with a kind of muscular clarity — dust, sweat, sudden violence — and lets the humour bubble up from the characters’ sheer audacity. Lancaster in particular seems to enjoy every moment of being a charming bastard.

The film’s cynicism isn’t bleak; it’s invigorating. You can see the seeds of the spaghetti western here, the move away from clean moral lines and toward something more ambiguous, more dangerous, more fun. Vera Cruz knows exactly what it is: a tough, stylish adventure where trust is a luxury and everyone’s playing an angle.

Last Night of the Proms — 7.10pm, BBC Two; 9pm, BBC One. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

One of those fixtures in the television calendar that needs little introduction, beginning on BBC Two before moving across to BBC One for the climax of the evening.

Avengers: Endgame — 8.15pm, Channel 4 (2019)

A film built as a finale and delivered as an event. Endgame arrives carrying the weight of a decade’s worth of Marvel storytelling, and it doesn’t shy away from the scale of that responsibility. It’s unabashedly big, unabashedly emotional, and determined to give every character and every long‑running thread its moment.

The opening stretch is unexpectedly quiet, almost reflective, before the film swings into its playful time‑heist detour — a victory lap through the MCU’s own history. Then comes the vast, operatic climax, a sequence so crowded with heroes and spectacle that the screen feels barely able to contain it.

What keeps the film grounded is its sincerity. Beneath the CGI and the noise, there’s a clear understanding that endings matter. Some arcs close gently, others with thunderous fanfare, but each feels like part of a story finally being tied off.

Long, loud and built for maximum impact — but also surprisingly heartfelt. A blockbuster that knows exactly what it means to its audience.

Radio 2 in the Park: Chaka Khan — from 9pm, BBC Two. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Chaka Khan, the soul, funk and disco queen, is the headline draw on day one of the annual shindig. Her set, shown in full from 10pm, should be a crowd-pleaser.

Before that comes an hour of highlights from Stirling City Park, including performances from ABC, Lulu, Emeli Sandé and Texas.

The evening then heads into the archives, with Chaka Khan at the BBC at 11pm, followed by Texas at the BBC at 11.40pm.

Saint Omer — 1.50am, BBC Two (2022)

Alice Diop’s Saint Omer is a courtroom drama in form but something far more unsettling in effect. Inspired by a real case, the film approaches its subject with a calm, almost forensic stillness, refusing melodrama and letting the details speak for themselves. That restraint is precisely what makes it so gripping. Every pause, every hesitation, every quiet admission seems to echo in the room.

Diop isn’t interested in easy judgments. She’s interested in the uncomfortable territory where empathy, horror and uncertainty overlap. Through the eyes of Rama, a novelist observing the trial, the film becomes a study of how we try — and often fail — to understand the inner lives of others. The performances are extraordinary in their understatement; nothing is pushed, nothing is embellished, and the result is a kind of emotional slow burn that’s far more powerful than a conventional courtroom thriller.

Demanding, yes. You have to meet the film on its own terms. But the reward is a drama that lingers long after it ends — precise, unsettling, and quietly devastating.

Sunday 13 September

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral — 2.55pm, 5 Action (1957)

A western cut from the old studio cloth, polished, purposeful and carried by the sheer presence of its stars. Burt Lancaster’s Wyatt Earp is all upright resolve, a man who seems carved out of frontier duty, while Kirk Douglas’s Doc Holliday brings the volatility — charm, danger, and that flicker of self‑destruction that Douglas could summon so effortlessly. Together they give the film its spine: one steady, one unpredictable, both irresistible to watch.

Robert Aldrich directs with a kind of muscular classicism. The film isn’t trying to reinvent the genre; it’s honouring it. Wide streets, dusty saloons, men circling each other with the knowledge that violence is both inevitable and absurd. The build‑up to the famous showdown is deliberate, almost ritualistic, and when the bullets finally fly, it feels less like action and more like the fulfilment of a legend Hollywood had been polishing for decades.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s — 8pm, Sky Arts (1961)

A film wrapped in charm, glamour and that unmistakable early‑60s sheen, yet one that carries a complicated legacy. Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly remains the centre of gravity — a performance so light it almost floats, yet anchored by a melancholy the film never fully names. She gives Holly a kind of shimmering fragility: a woman performing freedom while quietly terrified of what real closeness might demand. It’s one of cinema’s defining turns, and still astonishing in its precision.

George Peppard provides the steadier counterpoint, all quiet observation and gentle exasperation, while Henry Mancini’s score does half the emotional work — Moon River drifting through the film like a memory you’re not quite ready to confront. The elegance is undeniable.

But the film’s dated elements are impossible to ignore, and rightly so. Some choices now land with a thud, reminders of an era Hollywood preferred to gloss over. Acknowledging that doesn’t diminish Hepburn’s achievement; if anything, it sharpens it. Her Holly survives the film’s flaws and transcends them, becoming one of those rare characters who feels both iconic and strangely intimate.

A classic with caveats, but Hepburn’s performance remains untouchable.

Unmissable Moments at the BBC Proms 2026 — 8pm, BBC Four. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Two hours of mixed delights from this year’s Proms.

Radio 2 in the Park: Simple Minds — 10pm, BBC Two. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Simple Minds take centre stage for the second night of Radio 2 in the Park, bringing a formidable catalogue of songs with them.

Vesper — 11.10pm, Film4 (2022)

A striking piece of European science fiction that proves ambition isn’t measured in budget. Vesper imagines a future ravaged by ecological collapse, but it does so with a painter’s eye — damp forests, biotechnological oddities, and a world where every living thing seems half‑engineered and half‑feral. It’s grim, but not in the usual dystopian way; the film’s bleakness feels organic, lived‑in, almost mournful.

Raffiella Chapman gives the story its pulse. Her Vesper is resourceful, wary, and quietly determined, navigating a landscape where survival depends on ingenuity rather than firepower. The film’s strength lies in its restraint: no bombastic action, no glossy spectacle, just a slow, unsettling immersion in a future where nature has mutated beyond human control.

For a low‑budget production, it’s visually bold — intricate world‑building, strange textures, and a sense of scale achieved through imagination rather than money. The result is a sci‑fi film that feels genuinely otherworldly.

Ambitious, atmospheric and far more memorable than many bigger, louder dystopias.

Monday 14 September

Oliver! — 6.05pm, Film4 (1968)

Carol Reed’s lavish musical takes Oliver Twist and turns it into a full‑throated spectacle — big sets, big choruses, and Lionel Bart’s songs delivered with absolute gusto. It’s the kind of production that wears its scale proudly, every frame polished, every number staged to fill the screen. The story’s darker edges are softened, of course, but they’re still there if you look: the poverty, the fear, the precariousness of Oliver’s world.

What stands out now is how the film handles the women of Dickens’ novel, especially Nancy. Her arc gives the musical its emotional weight, a reminder that beneath the bright tunes lies a story shaped by sacrifice and danger. Counter Culture recently explored this in our piece on the women of Oliver Twist, and Reed’s version of Nancy carries that same tragic force — a character who anchors the film even as the spectacle swirls around her.

As a musical, though, Oliver! remains irresistible. Big tunes, big performances, and an Oscar‑winning production that still knows exactly how to entertain.

Epstein: Money, Power and Abuse — Panorama Special — 8pm, BBC One.

A Panorama special examining Jeffrey Epstein, the money and influence surrounding him, and the abuse at the heart of the story.

The Thin Blue Line — 10pm, Sky Documentaries (1988)

Errol Morris’s landmark documentary remains one of the clearest examples of non‑fiction cinema changing the real world. Through meticulous interviews and stylised reconstructions, Morris dismantles the official story surrounding the murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood, exposing contradictions, coached testimony and a prosecution more interested in a conviction than the truth. The film’s impact wasn’t theoretical: Randall Dale Adams, the man at the centre of the case, had his conviction overturned in 1989 after twelve years behind bars, with prosecutors declining to retry him. Adams walked free, while the evidence increasingly pointed toward David Ray Harris — who later ended up on death row for an unrelated killing.

Calm, precise and quietly devastating, The Thin Blue Line shows how a documentary can do more than illuminate a case; it can correct one.

Get Carter — 11.05pm, BBC Two (1971)

Jack Carter returns to Newcastle for his brother’s funeral and quickly realises the official story doesn’t add up. What begins as a family obligation turns into a cold, methodical hunt for the truth, dragging him through a city where every door he opens reveals something more rotten than the last.

Caine plays Carter with unnerving stillness — a man who already knows the world is corrupt and is simply confirming the details. The violence is abrupt, the humour dry enough to sting, and the landscape itself feels complicit: terraces, slag heaps, concrete estates, all part of the film’s bleak moral weather. Mike Hodges strips away glamour until only cause, effect and consequence remain.

Brutal, unsentimental and still one of the finest British crime films ever made.

Tuesday 15 September

Garbo: Where Did You Go? — 8pm, Sky Arts.

Noomi Rapace narrates a portrait of the enigmatic Greta Garbo, one of cinema’s most famous and famously elusive stars.

The Royals: Time to Go? — 9pm, Channel 4. Catch up via Channel 4 Streaming.

A look at the monarchy and the increasingly familiar question of what place, if any, the institution should have in modern Britain.

Sicario — 10.40pm, BBC One (2015)

Denis Villeneuve’s border thriller is tense, morally murky and superbly controlled, with Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin all excellent.

The Proposition — 11.35pm, Talking Pictures TV (2004)

A brutal, sun‑blasted Australian western built on a screenplay by Nick Cave — and if you know his work, the fingerprints are unmistakable. Violence, guilt, family, the harsh indifference of the landscape: Cave threads all of it through a story that feels both mythic and painfully human. As a big admirer of Cave, it’s hard not to relish how his sensibility shapes the film’s rhythm — the dialogue spare, the atmosphere heavy, the morality scorched at the edges.

The plot is simple and savage. Captain Stanley offers outlaw Charlie Burns an impossible bargain: hunt down and kill his older brother Arthur, a man responsible for atrocities, in exchange for the freedom of their youngest sibling. What follows is a slow, grim march through dust, heat and conscience. John Hillcoat directs with a stark, unblinking eye, letting the landscape do half the storytelling — a place where civilisation is a thin veneer and violence feels almost elemental.

Performances are flinty and lived‑in. Guy Pearce’s Charlie is a man hollowed out by loyalty and dread, while Danny Huston’s Arthur moves with the unsettling calm of someone who has already accepted damnation. The film’s brutality isn’t gratuitous; it’s part of the moral weather Cave and Hillcoat conjure so effectively.

Bleak, poetic and unforgettable — a western that feels like a ballad written in blood and dust.

You Were Never Really Here — 12.40am, Film4 (2017)

Lynne Ramsay and Joaquin Phoenix deliver a bruising, fragmented revenge film that is far more interested in trauma than conventional action.

Wednesday 16 September

Greed — 9pm, Film4 (2019)

Michael Winterbottom takes aim at obscene wealth, fast fashion and self-satisfied celebrity culture, with Steve Coogan doing what Steve Coogan does very well.

A River Runs Through It — 9pm, GREAT! TV (1992)

Robert Redford’s beautifully photographed drama follows two brothers growing up in early‑20th‑century Montana, their lives shaped by family, faith and the quiet rituals of fly‑fishing. What begins as a simple coming‑of‑age story deepens into something far more reflective: a film about the ties that bind, the choices that break us, and the things we can never quite say to the people we love.

The landscapes are extraordinary — rivers, forests, long summer light — all captured with a painterly calm that mirrors the film’s emotional restraint. Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer give quietly affecting performances, their characters drifting together and apart as adulthood complicates the certainties of childhood. Redford’s narration adds a gentle melancholy, turning the film into a kind of elegy for a time, a place and a family that can’t be held onto.

Graceful, contemplative and deeply felt. A film that moves like the river at its centre: steady, luminous and quietly unforgettable.

England Till I Die — 10pm, Channel 4. Catch up via Channel 4 Streaming.

A sharp and unsettling slice of reportage. Filmmaker Jamie Roberts follows Liam, an East Sussex anti-immigration activist, over nine months.

Sicario 2: Soldado — 10.40pm, BBC One (2018)

The follow-up drops Emily Blunt and doubles down on Brolin and del Toro. Darker, harsher and less subtle than the original, but still gripping.

Our Ladies — 1.45am, Film4 (2019)

A group of Catholic schoolgirls descend on Edinburgh for a choir competition and immediately discover they’re far more interested in freedom, mischief and possibility than in hitting the right notes. What follows is a chaotic, funny and unexpectedly tender day out, as friendships shift, loyalties wobble and each girl tests the limits of who she might become once the school walls aren’t around her.

The film’s strength is its honesty. It doesn’t romanticise teenage rebellion, but it doesn’t scold it either. The humour is sharp, the dialogue rings true, and the performances capture that mix of bravado and vulnerability that defines being young and desperate to escape the version of yourself adults insist on seeing. Edinburgh becomes part of the adventure — messy, tempting, full of corners where trouble and opportunity blur together.

Funny, warm and considerably less pious than their teachers might like. A small gem of a coming‑of‑age film.

Thursday 17 September

The Secret Life of Bees — 7pm, Channel 5.

A look at the extraordinary variety of Britain’s bees — some 270 species — exploring their history, science and habitats. It begins with a visit to King Charles III’s bees at Highgrove.

Heatwaves & Food Prices: Saving on Your Supermarket Shop? — Tonight — 7.30pm, ITV1/STV.

Kate Quilton explores how the UK’s heatwaves have affected farmers and food prices.

The Theory of Everything — 9pm, Film4 (2014)

Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking, with Felicity Jones equally impressive as Jane Hawking.

RED — 10.45pm, ITV1 (2010)

A slick, tongue‑in‑cheek action comedy built around the idea that the world’s most dangerous operatives are now supposed to be enjoying quiet retirement — and are utterly incapable of it. Bruce Willis’s Frank Moses is dragged back into the chaos when his past resurfaces, and he promptly reunites with a motley crew of former colleagues who are even less suited to domestic tranquillity than he is.

Helen Mirren is a delight as a refined assassin who still misses the adrenaline; John Malkovich steals scenes as a paranoid wildcard who’s usually right; and Morgan Freeman brings the easy charm of someone who’s seen everything and is still amused by most of it. The chemistry is the film’s real engine — older, sharper, funnier performers having a ball with material that lets them be both dangerous and daft.

Light, breezy and knowingly ridiculous, RED proves that retirement and tranquillity do not necessarily go together — especially when your old friends are armed to the teeth.

Io Capitano — 11.25pm, Film4 (2023)

Matteo Garrone’s migration drama follows two Senegalese teenagers, Seydou and Moussa, as they attempt the dangerous, often deadly journey to Europe — a route that promises opportunity but delivers exploitation, violence and unimaginable risk. What begins as a hopeful adventure quickly becomes a test of endurance, as the boys move through deserts, detention centres and the brutal economics of human trafficking.

Garrone films their odyssey with a stark, unblinking honesty. There’s no melodrama, no sensationalism, just the steady accumulation of hardship and small, fragile moments of kindness. The performances are remarkable in their simplicity: two boys trying to stay human in circumstances designed to strip that humanity away. The film’s power lies in its refusal to look away, and in its insistence that migration is not an abstract debate but a lived experience carried by real people with real dreams.

Tough, humane and quietly devastating — a story told with clarity, compassion and a refusal to simplify the truth.

Talking Pictures: David Lean — 11.30pm, BBC Four.

Following our Saturday selection of Lawrence of Arabia, this is a welcome opportunity to learn more about the man behind it. An archive-based insight into the life and career of director David Lean.

Friday 18 September

Shadow of a Doubt — 11am, Film4 (1943)

One of Hitchcock’s own favourites. Joseph Cotten brings menace into small-town America as Uncle Charlie, and the darkness gradually seeps through the respectable surface.

Coastal Unit — 9pm, More4. Walter Presents.

A French cop drama with a breezier touch than the genre usually allows. Brilliant rookie Lucia Passente is paired with jaded, old‑school veteran Victor Bruno Salomone, and the show leans into the fun of that mismatch — her sharp instincts and modern methods colliding with his weary pragmatism and “seen it all” attitude. The cases are serious enough, but the tone is lighter, warmer, more character‑led than the average procedural.

The coastal setting helps. Sun, sea and small‑town tensions give the series a relaxed rhythm, even when the investigations turn knotty. What keeps it engaging is the dynamic between the leads: Lucia’s energy pushing against Victor’s cynicism, each quietly learning from the other as they navigate crimes, colleagues and the odd personal complication.

Philadelphia — 9pm, GREAT! TV (1993)

Tom Hanks won his first Oscar for this landmark mainstream drama about AIDS, discrimination and dignity, with Denzel Washington alongside him.

Rolling Stones Night — from 10.10pm, BBC Four. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Unbelievably, the Rolling Stones are now up to their 25th studio album, and BBC Four marks their extraordinary longevity with an evening devoted to the band.

First up is a 2015 concert recorded at Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre, where the Stones performed their classic 1971 album Sticky Fingers in its entirety for the first — and, to date, only — time.

That is followed by two episodes of the 2022 series My Life as a Rolling Stone: Mick at 11.35pm, followed by Ronnie at 12.35am.

Starve Acre — 11pm, BBC Two (2023)

Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark anchor this bleak folk‑horror tale set in a Yorkshire landscape that seems determined to smother any hope. The story begins with a family grieving the loss of their young son, trying to hold themselves together in an isolated farmhouse where silence feels heavier than comfort. As Smith’s character becomes obsessed with the land’s strange history — old rituals, older stories, and something buried that should have stayed buried — the film shifts from domestic sorrow into something far more unsettling.

What makes Starve Acre effective is its restraint. The horror isn’t loud; it creeps. The countryside is shot not as pastoral beauty but as a place where ancient forces linger just out of sight, waiting for grief to weaken the boundary between the living and whatever came before. Clark brings a brittle, aching vulnerability, while Smith’s slow slide into obsession gives the film its unnerving pulse.

Bleak, atmospheric and quietly chilling — a folk‑horror story where the land itself feels like the antagonist.

Moonage Daydream — 1.20am, Channel 4 (2022)

Brett Morgen’s kaleidoscopic David Bowie documentary is less biography than sensory experience, making extensive use of Bowie’s own words, music and archive material. Take a look at the review I wrote when it was out at the cinema.

Streaming

Netflix

The Doll — all six episodes available from Wednesday 16 September.

A Polish drama centred on the ambitious Stanisław, a man determined to climb the social ladder while becoming increasingly consumed by his infatuation with Isabella.

Teenage Wasteland — available now.

Set in 1991 in blue-collar Middletown, New York, this tells the story of a teacher who creates a class called Electronic English in an attempt to connect with and engage his students.

Prime Video

You and Me Against the World — available from Friday 18 September.

Student Alma Lancaster is hiding rather a lot from her family. She is supposed to be studying law but is actually taking a filmmaking course. As if that were not enough, she is also involved with the rebellious Vadim, another part of her life unlikely to meet with family approval.

MobLand — Season 2 — episodes released weekly from Friday 18 September.

The criminal clans are back, including the Harrigans, with rivalries, alliances and family loyalties once again at the centre of things.

The Wizard of the Kremlin — available now.

A drama about the rise of Vladimir Putin and the political world surrounding his ascent to power.

Apple TV+

Slow Horses — Season 6, Episode 1 — available Wednesday 16 September.

Jackson Lamb and the dysfunctional inhabitants of Slough House return for another series.

Disney+

City of Blood — all eight episodes available Wednesday 16 September.

In a dystopian Berlin ruthlessly divided between rich and poor, sisters Phoebe, Soma, Paisa and Bea find themselves on opposite sides of the class divide. As they dig into the city’s criminal networks, they discover who is really pulling the strings.

Vampires.

Leaving Soon

Brassed Off — available on Channel 4 until Wednesday 16 September.

The Yorkshire mining community rallies around its colliery brass band against a backdrop of threatened pit closures, redundancies and a way of life being dismantled.

Coming Soon

The Diplomat — Series 4 — Netflix, available 15 October.

Radio

Saturday 12 September

The Bayeux Tapestry — 6am, 11am and 5pm, Radio 4 Extra.

An unusual recording from 1944 taking listeners through the story told by the Bayeux Tapestry.

Archive on 4: First Contact — 8pm, Radio 4.

A fascinating and difficult subject: indigenous peoples who remain uncontacted by the outside world. Survival International estimated in a November 2025 report that there are 196 uncontacted peoples around the world, chiefly in the Amazon basin.

Sunday 13 September

Between the Ears: A Circular History of the Loop — 7pm, Radio 3.

The loop — the repeated phrase, drum beat, guitar riff or fragment of sound — has become fundamental to modern music. This explores its history, including the wonderfully inventive methods of BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer Delia Derbyshire, for whom even tapping a metal lampshade with a small hammer could become raw musical material.

Monday 14–Friday 18 September

The Essay: In Voice — 9.45pm, Radio 3.

With the help of ear, nose and throat specialist Declan Costello, tenor Nicky Spence investigates how the human voice actually works. A week of essays looking at that most familiar, personal and surprisingly complicated of instruments.

Tuesday 15 September

Life as a Muse — 4pm, Radio 4.

Does the muse still have a place in the way we think about art and creativity? This considers the traditional idea of the muse while challenging some of the assumptions — and power relationships — that have come with it.

Selections and reviews by Pat Harrington

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The Mentalist – Season 1, Episode 1 (“Pilot”) Spoilers

September 1, 2026 at 11:42 am · Filed under Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged Bruno Heller, CBI Investigation, CBS Drama, Counter Culture, Crime Television, David Nutter, Patrick Jane, Pilot Episode, Red John, Simon Baker, The Mentalist, TV, TV Ser, TV Analysis

When The Mentalist first aired on CBS in September 2008, it arrived in a crowded field of procedural dramas. Yet its pilot stood apart — not through forensic spectacle, but through the quiet precision of a man reading the world like a book. Patrick Jane, played with deceptive ease by Simon Baker, is introduced not as a detective but as a fallen showman, a former “psychic” whose gift is observation rather than prophecy. The episode, written by Bruno Heller and directed by David Nutter, is a masterclass in character‑driven storytelling that balances crime‑scene intrigue with psychological depth.

The Opening: A False Calm

The first scene is deceptively domestic — a missing‑child case that turns into a murder. Jane wanders through the victim’s home, making tea, chatting lightly, and dismantling illusions. His charm disarms, his insight cuts. Within minutes, he exposes the rot beneath the family’s polite veneer, provoking a confession and a killing. It’s a shocking introduction: a consultant whose empathy is both weapon and wound.

The Case That Defines Him

Soon after, the California Bureau of Investigation investigates a double homicide marked with the blood‑red smiley face of Red John — the serial killer who murdered Jane’s wife and child. But Jane sees through the imitation. The placement of the symbol is wrong, the psychology inconsistent. He declares it a copycat, and he’s right. This moment crystallises the show’s thesis: truth hides in detail, not mysticism.

Patrick Jane: The Broken Magician

Jane’s brilliance is inseparable from his guilt. Once a television psychic, he mocked Red John on air — and paid with his family’s lives. The pilot lets this history seep through gestures rather than exposition: the tightening jaw, the hollow apartment with a mattress on the floor, the haunted stillness when he sees the killer’s mark again. Baker’s performance oscillates between levity and despair, a rhythm that becomes the series’ heartbeat.

The Ensemble: Friction and Balance

The CBI team forms the moral architecture around Jane’s chaos.

Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) is the pragmatic leader, torn between admiration and exasperation.
Kimball Cho (Tim Kang) offers dry humour and discipline — the procedural ballast.
Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) brings warmth and curiosity.
Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) embodies idealism, her belief in intuition clashing with Jane’s cynicism.

Their interplay grounds the episode, turning what could be a one‑man show into a dynamic study of belief versus reason.

Craft and Direction

David Nutter’s direction mirrors Jane’s mind: deliberate, observant, never rushed. The camera lingers on gestures — a swallow, a glance, a misplaced object — inviting viewers to play detective. The pacing alternates between stillness and sudden confrontation, echoing Jane’s own volatility. Critics at the time noted the show’s tonal difference from Psych or Monk: less whimsy, more melancholy, a procedural with a soul.

Themes That Haunt the Series

Observation as Power – Every truth is visible if you know where to look.
Deception and Consequence – Jane’s past fraudulence fuels his present honesty.
Trauma and Redemption – Solving crimes becomes his penance.
Morality and Manipulation – His empathy often blurs into exploitation; the pilot dares viewers to question whether justice justifies deceit.

Why It Endures

The pilot succeeds because it trusts silence. It doesn’t shout its brilliance; it lets us discover it, as Jane would. Beneath the procedural framework lies a meditation on guilt and the human need to make sense of chaos. The final image — Jane alone in his bare apartment, the blood‑red smiley face on the wall — is both closure and curse. It promises a series where every solved case is another step toward an impossible peace.

Reviewed by Christopher Storton

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Culture Vulture 1–7 August 2026

August 1, 2026 at 10:26 am · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews, Radio, Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged Culture Vulture, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, film, film review, TV reviews, TVGuide

August arrives with culture in abundance. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe opens its doors for another extraordinary month of creativity, the streaming services unveil everything from Jedi adventures to foul-mouthed animated felines, while television ranges from the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the splendour of ancient Rome. Add in Tony Bennett, Frida Kahlo, the Trojan War, the Baltic resistance to Soviet occupation and a clutch of classic films, and there’s scarcely a spare evening left.

Three highlights particularly stand out this week. Tony Bennett Night on BBC Four celebrates one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century. Netflix’s irreverent animated comedy Alley Cats looks set to become an unexpected cult favourite. And, of course, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe gets under way, with Counter Culture once again covering the world’s biggest arts festival.

Saturday 1 August

10.05am – BBC Two – On the Waterfront (1954)

Marlon Brando doesn’t just act in On the Waterfront—he inhabits it. Every gesture, every pause, feels like it’s drawn from the marrow of a man torn between conscience and survival. Elia Kazan’s camera catches that tension like lightning in a bottle, framing the New York docks as both battleground and confessional. The film breathes with the grit of postwar America, where loyalty can be a curse and silence a crime.

Seventy years later, it still hits like a gut punch. Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” isn’t just a line—it’s a lament for every soul who’s ever traded integrity for comfort. The rhythm of the dialogue, the sweat on the faces, the moral weight pressing down—it all feels alive, urgent, human. On the Waterfront endures because it’s not just about corruption; it’s about the fragile courage it takes to stand up when the world tells you to stay down.

That’s cinema at its most raw and righteous—where truth isn’t polished, it’s fought for.

1.50pm – BBC Two – Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Meet Me in St. Louis floats along with that unmistakable MGM glow, but Judy Garland gives it its heartbeat. She doesn’t just shine—she warms the whole frame, as if Minnelli built the film around the way she could turn a simple melody into something that feels like memory itself. There’s a looseness to the storytelling, a gentle drift through seasons and family rituals, yet every scene lands with emotional precision.

Sky Arts showing it on a quiet afternoon feels right. The film moves at the pace of a lived‑in home: laughter in one room, longing in another, and outside, an America shifting under everyone’s feet. Garland anchors it with wit, vulnerability, and that voice—clear as a bell, aching without ever collapsing into sentimentality.

It’s one of MGM’s crown jewels because it understands that nostalgia isn’t soft; it’s sharp, bittersweet, and sometimes brave. A film about family that never pretends families are simple, and a musical that knows songs can carry truths spoken nowhere else.

3.00pm – Sky Arts – The African Queen (1951)

Bogart and Hepburn spark off each other with the kind of chemistry you can’t fake, the sort that feels lived‑in from the first prickly exchange. The African Queen moves with that gentle, old‑Hollywood confidence—John Huston letting the river, the heat, and the sheer absurdity of wartime adventure shape the rhythm of the story. Bogart, all rough edges and weary charm, earns that Oscar not through grandstanding but through the small, human beats: the wry grin, the stubborn grit, the flicker of vulnerability when he realises he’s no longer drifting alone.

Hepburn, sharp as a tack and radiating moral steel, matches him stride for stride. Together they turn a ramshackle boat journey into something tender, funny, and quietly heroic. The film still feels fresh because it understands that courage isn’t always loud—sometimes it’s two mismatched souls deciding to push forward, inch by inch, against a world gone mad.

6.10pm – Film4 – The Martian (2015)

Ridley Scott’s The Martian is that rare blockbuster that makes science feel like poetry. Matt Damon’s stranded astronaut doesn’t just survive—he improvises, jokes, calculates, and refuses to surrender to the void. There’s a rhythm to his resilience, a kind of jazz born of isolation and intellect. Scott directs with a steady hand, balancing the grandeur of space with the intimacy of human ingenuity.

Every frame hums with purpose: the red dust of Mars against the sterile hum of NASA’s control rooms, the heartbeat of hope pulsing through data and duct tape. Damon’s charm keeps the film buoyant, never letting the technical precision drown out the humanity.

It’s not just a survival story—it’s a hymn to problem-solving, to the stubborn spark that refuses to go out. The Martian reminds us that even millions of miles from home, courage and curiosity can still feel like gravity.

8.00pm – Channel 4 – Hitler’s Games: Berlin 1936 in Colour

Using restored colour footage, this documentary revisits the Berlin Olympics but, unfortunately maintains the myths that have grown around them. Those aware of Jesse Owens’ own recollections, particularly regarding race in America and his interactions with Hitler, provide a useful reminder that history is often more nuanced than popular memory and documentary makers allows. Most people are, perhaps, unaware that Germany topped the medal table at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, finishing first overall with 101 medals, including 38 golds — the highest total of any nation at those Games.

9.00pm – Sky History – Troy Story (Episodes 1 & 2)

Archaeologists, historians and classicists investigate one of antiquity’s greatest mysteries: was there really a Trojan War, and if so, where was Troy?

9.15pm – ITV4 – The Long Good Friday (1980)

The Long Good Friday hits like a clenched fist on a pub table—sudden, uncompromising, impossible to ignore. Bob Hoskins doesn’t just play Harold Shand; he detonates him. There’s a volatility in his performance, a swagger that keeps slipping to reveal fear, ambition, and that brittle pride of a man who thinks he’s about to step onto the world stage only to find the floor shifting beneath him.

Watching it now, the film still feels electric. John Mackenzie shoots London as a city on the cusp—old loyalties fraying, new money circling like sharks, the future arriving whether anyone’s ready or not. Hoskins carries all of that in his shoulders, in the way he stalks through rooms, in those sudden bursts of charm that feel like weapons as much as warmth.

Helen Mirren matches him with cool precision, giving the film its moral intelligence. Together they redefine what British crime cinema could be: sharp, political, stylish without ever losing its grit. By the time Hoskins reaches that legendary final scene, every twitch of his face tells a story of a man realising the world has outgrown him. It’s magnificent.

11.45pm – Film4 – Babylon (2022)

Babylon doesn’t tiptoe into Hollywood’s silent era—it charges in, brass blaring, champagne spilling, the whole thing vibrating with Damien Chazelle’s feverish love for the chaos that built the movies. It’s a film that refuses moderation. Every scene feels like it’s been dialled up past the point of good sense, and that’s exactly why it lingers. Chazelle isn’t interested in reverence; he’s interested in the delirium, the sweat, the ambition that made early Hollywood both monstrous and magnetic.

Watching it late at night, it hits differently. The excess becomes hypnotic. Margot Robbie’s wild‑eyed ascent, Diego Calva’s quiet heartbreak, Brad Pitt’s fading‑star melancholy—they all move with different rhythms, clashing and harmonising like a jazz band on the brink of collapse. The film swings between grotesque comedy and aching beauty, sometimes in the same breath.

It’s ambitious to the point of madness, but that’s the point. Babylon is a love letter written in spilled ink and cigarette smoke, a reminder that the birth of cinema was never clean or polite. It was loud, unruly, and utterly unforgettable.

Sunday 2 August

8.00pm – ITV1 – Van der Valk

Van der Valk moves with that cool, unhurried confidence ITV leans on for its primetime crime drama, but Marc Warren gives it the spark. His Amsterdam detective isn’t cut from the usual cloth—there’s a slyness to him, a slightly off‑centre rhythm that keeps you leaning in. He’s sharp, but never showy; weary, but never defeated. Warren plays him like a man who’s seen too much of the city’s underbelly yet still finds something worth fighting for in its canals and backstreets.

A feature‑length case suits the show. It lets the investigation breathe, lets the city become a character in its own right—sleek modern angles rubbing up against old‑world melancholy. The tone is stylish without tipping into gloss, grounded without losing its edge. You feel the pulse of Amsterdam in the way the story unfolds: measured, moody, quietly tense.

It’s the kind of crime drama that doesn’t shout. It trusts atmosphere, character, and Warren’s ability to carry a mystery with a raised eyebrow and a half‑smile.

8.00pm – Channel 4 – Richard E. Grant’s Very Modern Odyssey

Channel 4, he takes Homer’s epic—this ancient, sea‑sprayed cornerstone of storytelling—and treats it not as something to be revered from a distance, but as a living, breathing map of how we still think about journeys, heroism and home.

Grant’s curiosity gives the whole thing its pulse. He wanders through the myth with wide‑eyed enthusiasm, connecting ancient wanderers to modern ones, finding echoes of Odysseus in places you wouldn’t expect. There’s a warmth to his delivery, a sense that he’s inviting you along rather than lecturing from a podium. The show becomes part travelogue, part cultural excavation, part love letter to the stories that refuse to die.

9.00pm – BBC Four – Great Violinists at the Proms

A showcase of remarkable performances from some of the greatest violinists ever to appear at the Proms.

9.00pm – Sky Documentaries – Groomed: The Truth Behind the Lie

A thought-provoking documentary examining one of the most contentious public debates of recent years.

10.05pm – Channel 4 – Erin Brockovich (2000)

Julia Roberts is irresistible here—not just charismatic, but sharp, funny, and utterly relentless. She plays Erin like someone who’s been underestimated her whole life and has finally decided she’s done with that. Every scene carries that crackle of determination, the sense of a woman pushing back against a system that expects her to stay quiet.

Steven Soderbergh keeps the film grounded, letting the real‑life stakes speak for themselves. The small California towns, the legal offices, the kitchen‑table conversations—they all build a world where corporate power feels enormous and personal suffering feels intimate. Roberts threads those two scales together with real grace. She’s the engine of the film, but never the whole story; she listens, absorbs, fights, and refuses to let anyone’s pain be reduced to paperwork.

A reminder that sometimes the most powerful thing in the room is simply someone who won’t back down.

11.40pm – Film4 – Withnail and I (1987)

Withnail and I drifts into the night like a half‑remembered story told over the last drink in a too‑quiet pub. Bruce Robinson’s cult comedy still feels gloriously out of step with the world—shambolic, razor‑sharp, and stitched together with the kind of quotable lines that lodge themselves in your brain for years.

Richard E. Grant’s Withnail is all flailing elegance and doomed bravado, a man performing his own collapse with theatrical flair. Paul McGann’s “I” steadies the film with a gentler melancholy, the straight man who slowly realises that friendship can be both a refuge and a trap. Together they wander through a Britain that seems permanently waterlogged, chasing dignity, booze, and some vague notion of escape.

What catches you off guard, even now, is the poignancy beneath the chaos. The humour is wild, eccentric, often absurd—but the sadness is real, creeping in around the edges until that final speech lands with unexpected weight. It’s a comedy that knows how fragile people can be, and how ridiculous they often are in trying to hide it.

Monday 3 August

8.55pm – PBS America – The Anti-Soviet Fighters
The remarkable story of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian resistance movements that continued fighting Soviet occupation long after the Second World War ended.

10.20pm – BBC Four – Becoming Frida Kahlo

Becoming Frida Kahlo on BBC Four is a richly crafted portrait of an artist whose life refuses to be reduced to myth. The series traces Kahlo’s experiences—her physical pain, her political convictions, her turbulent relationships—and shows how each thread wove itself into the fierce, intimate visual language that made her one of the most recognisable artists of the 20th century. It’s reflective, beautifully paced, and attentive to the emotional and political landscapes she moved through.

And right now, London is giving Kahlo the kind of major platform she hasn’t had in decades. Tate Modern is hosting Frida: The Making of an Icon, a landmark exhibition running 25 June 2026 – 3 January 2027. It’s a substantial show: more than 30 works by Kahlo, alongside photographs, garments, jewellery, personal artefacts, and over 200 pieces by contemporaries and later artists influenced by her.

It’s the first UK exhibition in over twenty years to present Kahlo at this scale, exploring not just her paintings but the construction of her identity, her political commitments, and the global phenomenon of “Fridamania.” If you’re watching the BBC Four documentary and want to see that story unfold in person, Tate Modern is where London is currently telling it.

10.45pm – BBC One – The Mist (2007)

The Mist settles over you slowly, the way real fear does. Frank Darabont takes Stephen King’s tight, unnerving novella and stretches it just enough to let the dread breathe. What begins as a simple supermarket lockdown becomes a pressure cooker—fog outside, panic inside, and that awful realisation that the monsters in the mist aren’t always the ones you should be most afraid of.

Darabont understands group psychology better than most filmmakers. You watch the crowd fracture, cling to false prophets, lash out, and crumble. The film’s rhythm shifts from quiet unease to full‑blown hysteria, and every beat feels horribly plausible. Thomas Jane gives the story its emotional spine, but it’s the ensemble—the terrified, the righteous, the broken—that makes the whole thing feel like a study in how quickly civilisation can thin.

And then there’s that ending. Still one of the most devastating choices in modern horror, not because it’s shocking, but because it’s inevitable in a way you don’t see coming. Late‑night BBC One is the perfect slot for it: a film that leaves you staring at the screen long after the credits roll, wondering what fear does to people when the world stops making sense.

11.05pm – BBC Two – Sing Sing (2023)

Sing Sing is one of those films that doesn’t just move you—it quietly shifts something inside you. At 11.05pm on BBC Two, it arrives with the emotional clarity that late‑night cinema is made for. Colman Domingo leads an extraordinary ensemble, but what makes the film remarkable is how little it relies on conventional sentiment. Instead, it trusts the raw, unvarnished power of creativity—men in a maximum‑security prison discovering that performance can be liberation, connection, even redemption.

Domingo gives a performance that feels lived‑in, patient, and deeply humane. Around him, the cast—many of them formerly incarcerated—bring a truthfulness you simply can’t manufacture. The film’s rhythm is gentle but insistent, building toward moments that feel almost miraculous in their simplicity. It’s one of the most moving pieces of recent American cinema because it never begs for sympathy; it shows transformation happening in real time, through art, trust, and the fragile courage to try.

It’s a film about the possibility of change, and the way creativity can carve out space for dignity even in the harshest of environments.

Tuesday 4 August

9.00pm – Channel 5 – The Victorians with Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman (Catch up via 5 Streaming)

The Victorians with Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman has that lively, hands‑on energy Channel 5 does well when it leans into practical history. Rinder brings sharp curiosity and a knack for asking the questions viewers are already thinking, while Ruth Goodman—always a joy in any historical setting—grounds everything in lived experience. She doesn’t just explain Victorian life; she shows it, tries it, tests it, and makes the era feel tactile rather than distant.

Together they explore a Britain in the midst of transformation: industry reshaping cities, new social rules emerging, domestic life shifting under the weight of progress. The tone is warm, engaging, and full of those small, fascinating details that make the period come alive. Catching up via 5 Streaming suits it perfectly—it’s the kind of programme you dip into and come away knowing something genuinely interesting about how people worked, ate, travelled, and thought during one of the most restless centuries in British history.

9.00pm – U&Gold – Joe and David’s Magical Sitcom Tour (Catch up via NOW)
A nostalgic and affectionate celebration of Britain’s sitcom heritage.

9.00pm – Sky Documentaries – The Salisbury Poisonings: The Spy Next Door (Catch up via NOW)
A compelling account of one of the most audacious espionage operations ever carried out on British soil.

LONDON, UK. March 12, 2019: Olivia Atwood arriving for the TRIC Awards 2019 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London. Picture: Steve Vas/Featureflash

9.00pm – ITV2 – Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection

Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection is sharp, timely television—an unflinching look at the beauty industry’s collision with social media and the relentless pressure to curate perfection. At 9.00pm on ITV2, it’s not just another celebrity documentary; it’s a mirror held up to a culture obsessed with filters, fillers and validation.

Attwood approaches the subject with disarming honesty, using her own experiences to probe the contradictions of modern beauty—how empowerment and insecurity often coexist in the same selfie. The film moves between clinics, influencers and candid conversations, exposing the emotional toll behind the glossy façade.

What makes it compelling is its refusal to sneer or sensationalise. Instead, it asks difficult questions about choice, identity and the price we pay—financially and psychologically—for chasing an ideal that keeps shifting. It’s provocative, empathetic and very much of its moment: a documentary that understands the performance of perfection is never just skin‑deep.

11.05pm – BBC Two – The Last Bus (2021)

The Last Bus is a quiet film, but it carries a weight that creeps up on you. Timothy Spall gives one of his most delicate, inward performances as Tom, a widower travelling the length of Britain with nothing but a bus pass, a small suitcase and a promise he refuses to break. Spall plays him with a kind of worn gentleness—no grand speeches, no theatrics, just a man moving steadily through grief, memory and the landscapes that shaped a life shared with someone he loved.

The road‑movie structure suits the story perfectly. Each stop offers a small human moment: kindness, curiosity, the occasional misunderstanding. These encounters accumulate into something quietly profound, showing how even the simplest journey can become an act of devotion. The film never pushes too hard; it trusts Spall’s face, his silences, and the fragile determination that keeps him moving north.

It’s gentle, deeply moving, and exactly the sort of late‑night BBC Two offering that stays with you long after the credits roll.

Wednesday 5 August

12.55pm – Film4 – Monkey Business (1952)

Monkey Business is pure, unfiltered Marx Brothers mayhem—Howard Hawks giving Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo an ocean liner to run riot on, and then wisely getting out of their way. The plot barely exists, and that’s part of the charm. It’s simply a loose frame on which they hang a relentless barrage of visual gags, verbal acrobatics and beautifully deranged set‑pieces.

Groucho fires off one‑liners with that sly, sideways swagger; Harpo turns the ship into his personal playground of silent chaos; Chico bends language until it squeaks; and Zeppo, as ever, keeps the whole thing just this side of coherent. Hawks directs with a light touch, letting the brothers’ comic instincts dictate the rhythm—fast, silly, and gloriously anarchic.

It’s the kind of film that reminds you how timeless true comic invention is. The jokes don’t date because they’re built on instinct, mischief and sheer audacity. If you need proof that genius survives every era, Monkey Business delivers it with a grin and a horn blast.

4.35pm – Film4 – Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is one of John Huston’s quiet triumphs—a wartime drama that refuses bombast and instead finds its power in restraint, character, and the fragile bond between two people caught in an impossible situation. Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum are superb together, their performances shaped by understatement rather than melodrama. Kerr’s Sister Angela is composed, principled, and gently humorous; Mitchum’s Allison is rough‑edged, loyal, and unexpectedly tender.

Stranded on a Pacific island as war closes in around them, the pair navigate danger with a relationship built not on romance but on mutual respect. Huston lets their connection grow in small gestures, shared silences, and the quiet recognition of each other’s strength. The film’s emotional pull comes from what isn’t said—the dignity of two people holding fast to who they are, even as the world around them collapses.

6.40pm – Film4 – Steel Magnolias (1989)

Steal Magnolias is one of those films that earns its reputation the honest way: through character, warmth and the kind of emotional truth that sneaks up on you. Set largely in Truvy’s Louisiana beauty salon, Dolly Parton presides with that effortless blend of wit and kindness, creating a space where friendship feels like a form of shelter. It’s the hub of the story, a place where lives intersect, jokes fly, and the women who gather there reveal themselves in ways they never could anywhere else.

The ensemble is enviable. Sally Field’s fierce tenderness, Julia Roberts’ luminous charm, Shirley MacLaine’s gloriously sharp humour, Olympia Dukakis’ steel‑backed grace and Daryl Hannah’s gentle vulnerability all mesh into a portrait of Southern womanhood that feels lived‑in rather than stylised. The humour is rich, rooted in character rather than caricature, and the film’s emotional turns land because they’re built on genuine connection.

It balances laughter with heartbreak in a way few films manage. The joy is real, the sorrow earned, and by the time the credits roll you feel as though you’ve spent time with people who matter.

8.00pm – Sky Arts – Voices of the Valleys (Catch up via NOW)
This celebration of the musical traditions of the South Wales Valleys explores the communities, choirs and performers who have helped shape one of Britain’s richest cultural landscapes. Blending performance with personal stories, it is a reminder that music has long been at the heart of Welsh identity and community life.

8.00pm – BBC Four – The Treasures of Ancient Rome: Pomp and Perversion
Mary Beard explores how Roman attitudes towards sex, power and violence found expression in the empire’s extraordinary art. Characteristically, she brings both scholarship and accessibility to a subject often reduced to cliché.

8.55pm – BBC Four – Mary Beard Remembers: Ultimate Rome – Empire Without Limits
A short retrospective in which Mary Beard reflects on her acclaimed 2016 series, discussing what has changed in our understanding of ancient Rome and why it continues to fascinate.

9.00pm – Film4 – Speed (1994)

Speed remains one of the defining action films of the 1990s—lean, muscular, and utterly confident in what it’s doing. At 9pm on Film4, it still feels exhilarating. Keanu Reeves plays Jack Traven with stripped‑back intensity, all focus and forward motion, while Sandra Bullock brings warmth, wit and a grounded charm that makes their pairing instantly likeable. They’re thrown together on a Los Angeles bus rigged with a bomb that will detonate if its speed drops below 50 miles an hour, and the film never lets that tension slacken.

Jan de Bont directs with a precision that keeps everything tight: no flab, no filler, just a series of escalating challenges that push the characters—and the audience—right to the edge. From the opening elevator sequence to the final stretch, it’s paced with such clarity and momentum that you barely have time to breathe. The stunts are practical, the stakes feel real, and the whole thing moves with the kind of clean, propulsive energy modern blockbusters often forget.

9.10pm – BBC Four – Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limits
Beard examines the myths, revolutions and contradictions that shaped the Roman Empire at the height of its power. Rather than presenting Rome as a monolithic civilisation, she reveals a dynamic and often deeply contested world whose influence still reaches into modern politics, law and culture.

10.00pm – BBC Two – The Funeral Home Horror: The Big Cases (Catch up via BBC iPlayer)
One of the year’s most shocking criminal cases comes under the microscope in this concise and sensitively handled documentary. It examines how Hull funeral director Robert Bush was able to deceive grieving families over many years, pleading guilty to 67 offences that included hoarding bodies, selling fraudulent funeral plans and providing relatives with the ashes of strangers instead of their loved ones. The programme gives deserved prominence to the families whose determination has transformed personal tragedy into a campaign for tighter regulation of the funeral industry. Bush’s recent 20-year prison sentence brings a measure of justice, but the wider questions about oversight and public trust remain every bit as important.

10.10pm – BBC Four – I, Claudius (Two Episodes)
The evening concludes with two episodes of one of the BBC’s greatest dramas. Adapted from Robert Graves’ novels, I, Claudius transformed Roman history into gripping television, boasting unforgettable performances from Derek Jacobi, Siân Phillips, John Hurt and Brian Blessed. Nearly half a century later it has scarcely dated.

Thursday 6 August

Talking Pictures TV – The History of Mr. Polly (1948)

The History of Mr. Polly is one of those British classics that feels like it’s been quietly waiting for people to rediscover it. Anthony Pelissier’s 1948 adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel gives John Mills one of his most engaging roles: Alfred Polly, a draper stuck in a life of small disappointments and quiet frustration, who finally decides—after a string of comic mishaps—that he’s had enough. His solution isn’t heroic in the traditional sense; it’s simply the stubborn, hopeful act of reinventing himself.

Mills plays Polly with a wonderfully light touch, blending humour, melancholy and a kind of gentle bewilderment at the world. Pelissier keeps the tone nimble, shifting between satire, poignancy and outright farce without losing the thread of Wells’ affection for ordinary people yearning for something better. The film’s charm lies in its humanity: it understands how small lives can contain big dreams, and how reinvention often begins with a single, slightly ridiculous leap.

It deserves to be better known—a warm, witty slice of post‑war British cinema that still feels fresh in its empathy and its comic spirit.

9.30am – BBC Radio 4 – The Guitar Story

Bob Dylan’s decision to plug in an electric guitar at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966 remains one of rock history’s defining moments, but this series asks a much broader question: why has the guitar become such a potent cultural symbol? Presenter John Wilson explores the instrument’s musical, political and social significance, drawing on contributions from some of the world’s leading guitarists. Insightful, entertaining and rich with musical examples, it promises to strike the right chord with musicians and music lovers alike.

6.45pm – Film4 – The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is a gently dazzling piece of cinema, and at 6.45pm on Film4 it’s exactly the sort of story that rewards settling in and letting its eccentricities wash over you. Benedict Cumberbatch brings warmth, vulnerability and a wonderfully off‑kilter charm to Louis Wain, the Victorian illustrator whose cat paintings—wide‑eyed, colourful, increasingly fantastical—became a cultural sensation. He plays Wain not as a caricature of genius, but as a man whose creativity is inseparable from his emotional fragility, his curiosity and his deep, aching need to make sense of the world.

Claire Foy provides superb support as Emily, his wife and anchor, giving the film its emotional centre. Their relationship is tender without sentimentality, and the film’s most affecting moments come from the quiet devotion between them. Beneath the whimsical visuals and playful tone lies a thoughtful portrait of love, mental health and the ways imagination can both illuminate and overwhelm a life.

It’s visually rich, emotionally generous and quietly haunting—a biographical drama that understands that the line between delight and sorrow is often thinner than we think.

9.00pm – BBC One – Who Do You Think You Are? (Catch up via BBC iPlayer)

Olympic heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson explores her family history, travelling from Liverpool to the Bahamas and Miami, where her father Ricardo was born. As ever, the series combines meticulous genealogical research with powerful personal stories, revealing how individual family histories are often shaped by much broader currents of migration, hardship and resilience.

9.00pm & 10.00pm – Sky Atlantic – Possession (Catch up via NOW)

Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Claudia, a woman of dual heritage whose own identity becomes inseparable from the mystery she has been asked to investigate. Her search takes her from Britain to Hope Hill, a Jamaican plantation inherited following the death of a British aristocrat, where buried family secrets and the enduring legacy of empire begin to emerge. Rich in atmosphere and historical resonance, it promises to combine a compelling mystery with thoughtful exploration of memory, inheritance and identity.

11.05pm – BBC Two – Women Talking (2022)

Women Talking is a film that proves conversation can be as gripping as any physical drama. Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel unfolds almost entirely through dialogue—women in an isolated religious community gathering to decide their future after a profound betrayal. Yet the stillness is charged; every exchange carries weight, urgency and moral complexity.

The ensemble is remarkable. Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy and Frances McDormand each bring a distinct emotional register, creating a chorus of voices wrestling with faith, justice, forgiveness and survival. Polley’s direction is clear‑eyed and compassionate, allowing the women’s arguments, doubts and hopes to shape the film’s momentum.

It’s demanding in the best way—intellectually rigorous, emotionally piercing, and unafraid of silence. But it’s also richly rewarding, a rare film that treats thought, debate and collective decision‑making as acts of courage.

11.40pm – Film4 – Dance with a Stranger (1985)

Dance with a Stranger is a stark, absorbing piece of British cinema, and at 11.40pm on Film4 it lands with the quiet force it’s always had. Miranda Richardson is outstanding as Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain—a performance that’s brittle, magnetic and painfully human. She never plays Ellis as a symbol or a headline; she plays her as a woman caught in a destructive relationship and a society unwilling to see the full truth of her circumstances.

Mike Newell directs with restraint, refusing sensationalism. Instead, he shapes a tragic portrait of obsession, domestic abuse and a justice system on the brink of change. The film’s power lies in its understatement: the violence is never lurid, the emotions never overstated, and the political implications emerge naturally from the story rather than being imposed on it.

It’s a sombre, compelling drama that lingers, not because it shouts, but because it understands how tragedy often unfolds quietly—one bad decision, one cruel moment, one system failing to recognise the complexity of a life.

Friday 7 August

6.40pm – Film4 – Ad Astra (2019)

Ad Astra is James Gray working on an epic canvas while telling a story that’s almost disarmingly intimate. At 6.40pm on Film4, it plays like a slow, steady pulse in deep space. Brad Pitt gives one of his most restrained and quietly affecting performances as Roy McBride, an astronaut whose outward calm masks a lifetime of emotional isolation. His mission—to track down his father at the edge of the solar system—becomes less a sci‑fi quest than a reckoning with absence, abandonment and the cost of holding yourself too tightly together.

Gray treats space not as spectacle but as a vast, echoing metaphor. The film is visually magnificent—lunar chases, drifting debris fields, the cold beauty of Neptune—but every image serves the emotional journey rather than overwhelming it. Pitt anchors the film with a stillness that draws you in, and Tommy Lee Jones, as the father he’s chasing, gives the story its aching centre.

It’s contemplative, atmospheric and quietly powerful, a film that values introspection as much as action and finds its drama in the spaces between people rather than the void between planets.

9.45pm – BBC Four – Tony Bennett Night

Few compliments in popular music carry more weight than Frank Sinatra’s description of Tony Bennett as “the best singer in the business”, and Bennett spent a lifetime justifying it. The evening begins with Tony Bennett at the London Palladium, a 2011 BBC concert featuring effortless performances of classics including The Good Life, alongside memorable duets with Cleo Laine and Leona Lewis.

The celebration continues with all six episodes of Tony Bennett Sings, his 1979 BBC series devoted to the Great American Songbook, before concluding with Tony Bennett’s New York (1996), an affectionate profile reflecting on his remarkable career and lifelong relationship with the city that shaped him. A fitting tribute to one of the twentieth century’s greatest interpreters of popular song.

28 Days Later still hits with the jolt it had in 2002. Danny Boyle took the zombie film—shambling, familiar, a bit creaky by that point—and detonated it. His vision of a deserted, hollowed‑out Britain is as unsettling as ever: empty motorways, silent cities, danger lurking in every shadow. The horror is visceral and fast, driven by the now‑iconic “rage” infected who move with terrifying speed, but the film’s real power comes from its atmosphere of abandonment and unease.

Cillian Murphy’s emergence from a coma into a devastated London remains one of the great opening sequences of modern horror, and Boyle keeps the pace furious without sacrificing thoughtfulness. The film asks what society becomes when its structures collapse, and what people become when survival is the only currency left.

It’s fast, furious and unexpectedly reflective—a defining horror film of the twenty‑first century, and still one of the most influential.

11.05pm – BBC Two – Hoard (2023)

Hoard is an emotionally raw and quietly unsettling debut, the kind of film that doesn’t chase conventional storytelling but instead follows the strange, jagged paths grief can carve through a life. At 11.05pm on BBC Two, it feels exactly right for late‑night viewing: intimate, off‑kilter, and lingering.

The film explores memory, loss and the coping mechanisms people build—sometimes tender, sometimes troubling—to survive what they can’t fully articulate. Its structure is unconventional, shifting between past and present with a dreamlike logic that won’t appeal to everyone, but that very looseness gives it its power. It’s less about plot than about emotional texture, the way trauma embeds itself in objects, habits and relationships.

What stays with you is its honesty. It doesn’t tidy grief into something neat or redemptive; it shows how messy, strange and deeply human it can be.

11.50pm – Film4 – Last Night in Soho (2021)

Last Night in Soho is Edgar Wright at his most visually seductive and tonally unsettling. At 11.50pm on Film4, it’s a perfect late‑night watch: stylish, eerie and steeped in nostalgia that slowly curdles into something darker. Wright blends psychological horror with a time‑slip fantasy that pulls a modern‑day fashion student, played with fragile intensity by Thomasin McKenzie, into the neon‑lit glamour of 1960s Soho.

What begins as a dream of Swinging London becomes a nightmare as she becomes entangled with the life of Anya Taylor‑Joy’s mesmerising singer, whose confidence and allure mask a story of exploitation and fear. Wright recreates the period with loving detail—music, colour, fashion, atmosphere—then twists it, revealing the shadows beneath the shimmer.

It’s melancholy as much as frightening, a thriller driven by mood, memory and the danger of idealising the past. McKenzie and Taylor‑Joy are excellent, anchoring a film that’s as emotionally haunting as it is visually dazzling.

2.10am – Film4 – Sick of Myself (2022)

Sick of Myself is a wickedly funny and deeply uncomfortable satire—one of those films that makes you laugh even as you wince. At 2.10am on Film4, its bite feels even sharper. The Norwegian black comedy follows a young woman so consumed by narcissism and the hunger for attention that she embarks on increasingly extreme, self‑destructive schemes to stay in the spotlight.

The film skewers modern performative culture with fearless abandon. It’s provocative, frequently outrageous, and unafraid to push its protagonist into territory that’s both absurd and painfully recognisable. The humour is razor‑sharp, the social commentary brutal, and the escalation of her behaviour both horrifying and hilarious.

Uncomfortable, provocative and often laugh‑out‑loud funny, it stands as one of the sharpest social comedies of recent years—an audacious portrait of self‑obsession taken to its logical, disastrous conclusion.

Streaming

Prime Video (available now)
Marty Supreme
One of the week’s biggest streaming arrivals, Marty Supreme comes with plenty of anticipation and a cast to match. Whether you’re drawn by the performances or simply curious to see what the buzz is about, it’s likely to dominate conversations over the coming weeks.

Prime Video (available now)
Masters of the Universe
Eternia returns in a new adaptation of one of popular culture’s most enduring fantasy franchises. Sword-and-sorcery spectacle, colourful heroes and larger-than-life villains remain the order of the day, promising nostalgic pleasure for those who grew up with He-Man while introducing the mythology to a new generation.

HBO Max (available now)
President Curtis
The Rick and Morty universe continues to expand with this spin-off centred on the perpetually exasperated President Andre Curtis, once again voiced by Keith David. Faced with mysterious crashes and increasingly bizarre threats, Curtis has to keep the country together while the absurdity around him spirals ever further out of control.

Monday 3 August – Acorn TV
The Chelsea Detective – Series 4 (weekly episodes)
Adrian Scarborough returns as DI Max Arnold, with Vanessa Emme as DS Layla Walsh, for another run of elegant murder mysteries hidden behind Chelsea’s immaculate façades. The opening investigation centres on the death of an undercover journalist looking into a celebrity fashion guru.

Wednesday 5 August – Disney+
Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi (all eight episodes)
One of the most acclaimed entries in Star Wars: Visions expands into a full series as Kara continues her Jedi training under Margrave Juro. A new generation of Jedi sets out to rescue her father while confronting a mysterious Sith leader. It promises the visual flair and imaginative storytelling that made the original such a standout.

Wednesday 5 August – Prime Video
Sterling Point (all six episodes)
A coming-of-age drama following young adults navigating friendship, ambition and uncertain futures. If it fulfils its promise, this should be a warm, emotionally honest addition to the genre.

Friday 7 August – Netflix
Alley Cats (all six episodes)
Cat lovers have an extra reason to tune in this week. Ricky Gervais is among the creative forces behind this gleefully foul-mouthed adult animation, following cynical Gus, uncouth Fang, disgusting Puke and gloriously dim Olive as they roam the streets causing mayhem while mocking their pampered feline friend Ponts. Everything changes with the arrival of a lost kitten, giving the gang an unexpected shared purpose.

The premise is classic sitcom, but the semi-improvised dialogue feels closer to a wonderfully chaotic comedy podcast, veering into discussions about death, religion and whether honeybees are underachieving. Packed with colourful language and episodes running comfortably under half an hour, this unapologetically adult cartoon could become one of the year’s surprise comedy hits.

Leaving Soon

BBC iPlayer (until Thursday)
Great Expectations (1946)
David Lean’s magnificent adaptation of Dickens remains the definitive screen version. Beautifully photographed, superbly acted and rich in atmosphere, it is well worth revisiting while it’s still available.

Radio

Sunday 2 August

1.30pm – BBC Radio 4 – Britain’s Robot Army
Former Army officer Will Robson examines how drones, autonomous systems, laser weapons and artificial intelligence are transforming the economics of modern warfare. As armed forces around the world rethink the balance between manpower and machines, he asks what tomorrow’s battlefield might look like and what these technological changes could mean for Britain’s defence strategy. Timely, thought-provoking and likely to raise as many questions as it answers.

9.00pm – Boom Radio – Sir Tim Rice’s Legacy Tracks
Who comes to mind when you hear Good Vibrations or Baker Street? The Beach Boys and Gerry Rafferty, naturally—but what about Paul Tanner, whose prototype electro-theremin gave Good Vibrations its otherworldly sound, or Raphael Ravenscroft, whose unforgettable saxophone solo transformed Baker Street into an all-time classic? Sir Tim Rice shines a welcome spotlight on the gifted musicians, arrangers and innovators who so often remain in the shadows. Beautifully assembled, the programme is packed with fascinating stories behind classics including Yesterday, Telstar and even the Doctor Who theme. For anyone who loves the craft behind great records, this is an absolute treat.

Wednesday 5 August

3.30pm – BBC Radio 4 – The Ocean Within Us
A fascinating exploration of one of the most intriguing medical discoveries of recent years. Prompted by the publication of a landmark 2018 scientific paper, this programme examines the interstitium—a fluid-filled network of microscopic spaces surrounding our organs, joints and connective tissues that appears to function as a previously unrecognised organ. Researchers are increasingly linking it to wound healing, regulation of the body’s internal clock and the way cancer spreads between tissues. Complex science is made accessible in what promises to be an absorbing listen for anyone interested in medicine and the frontiers of human biology.

Thursday 6 August

9.30am – BBC Radio 4 – The Guitar Story
Bob Dylan’s decision to plug in an electric guitar at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966 remains one of popular music’s defining moments, but this series asks a much broader question: why has the guitar become such a potent cultural symbol? Presenter John Wilson explores the instrument’s musical, political and social significance, drawing on contributions from some of the world’s leading guitarists. Insightful, entertaining and rich with musical examples, it promises to strike the right chord with musicians and music lovers alike.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe (7–31 August)

The term “Fringe” was coined in 1947 when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the newly created Edinburgh International Festival and staged their own performances on the margins of the official programme. From those gloriously independent beginnings, the Fringe has grown from the city’s alternative sideshow into its cultural crown jewel, while also serving as Britain’s closest equivalent to an off-Broadway proving ground, where new shows are tested, careers are launched and tomorrow’s hits are born.

Here at Counter Culture, we’ve been building up to the festival for weeks with a series of interviews featuring performers from across this year’s programme. Once the Fringe gets under way, we’ll have three reporters on the ground in Edinburgh, bringing you interviews, reviews, features and daily updates throughout the month.

More than 3,600 productions are expected this year, encompassing everything from major comedy names and ambitious new drama to live podcast recordings, music, cabaret, dance and more reimagined Shakespeare than you could shake a bodkin at. Choosing a single highlight from this megalodon of a festival would be impossible, so instead here is a small selection of interviews with performers with productions that have particularly caught my eye.

00:45:00 – Five Walk In. One Walk Out. The Audience Decides.

Kate Butch: Camp, Chaos and Kindness at the Fringe

John‑Luke Roberts: Running, Talking, and Twisting Comedy Into New Shapes

Elton Reimagined: Jess Robinson’s Joyful, Bonkers, Brilliant Tribute

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Culture Vulture 25–31 July 2026

July 24, 2026 at 7:13 pm · Filed under Culture Vulture, Film & DVD Reviews, Radio, Streaming, TV Shows ·Tagged Culture Vulture, film, film review, movie-review, TV, TV reviews, TVGuide

This week’s viewing is haunted—in the best possible sense—by history. Whether it is the grandeur and eventual collapse of Ancient Rome, the moral shadows of the Second World War, the raw psychological scars left by terrorism, or the enduring power of great music and cinema, broadcasters have assembled an unusually rich schedule that rewards curiosity as much as simple entertainment.

There is also a striking thread running through the week’s selections: the stories we tell ourselves. Monster and Taxi Driver challenge our assumptions about truth and perception; documentaries revisit the Gunpowder Plot, the Roman Empire and one of the defining terrorist conspiracies of the modern age; while streaming services continue to mine history, fashion, crime and horror for fresh audiences.

Three recommendations stand above the rest. BBC Two’s tribute to the late Bonnie Tyler celebrates one of Britain’s most distinctive rock voices. Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver remains one of the greatest American films ever made and is perfectly complemented by BBC Four’s evening celebrating cinema of the 1970s. History enthusiasts, meanwhile, are spoilt with Roman documentaries, Lucy Worsley’s latest investigation and Ken Burns’ magnificent explorations of the American past.

Saturday 25 July

1.05pm – BBC Two – High Society (1956)

There’s a certain magic in High Society that refuses to fade, no matter how many decades pass. Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra glide through Cole Porter’s melodies with effortless charm, their voices weaving a kind of urbane spell that feels both playful and timeless. Grace Kelly, poised and luminous, gives her final performance before stepping into royalty — and that knowledge lends every glance, every smile, a quiet ache beneath the glamour.

Louis Armstrong’s presence lifts the film beyond its polished veneer, injecting warmth and swing into Newport’s highbrow world. The jazz sequences sparkle with spontaneity, a reminder that sophistication needn’t be stiff. Porter’s songs — “True Love,” “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” — still shimmer with wit and longing, as if written yesterday.

It’s a film that dances between elegance and emotion, champagne and sincerity. The satin gowns, the clipped dialogue, the easy rhythm of its music — all combine into a portrait of Hollywood grace at its peak. Watching it now, you sense not nostalgia but continuity: a reminder that style, when married to heart, never truly goes out of fashion.

2.50pm – BBC Two – Casablanca (1942)

Every so often, a film earns the right to be called a masterpiece — Casablanca is one of those rare few. Humphrey Bogart’s weary cynicism and Ingrid Bergman’s luminous grace create a chemistry that feels almost mythic, as if the camera caught lightning in a bottle. Michael Curtiz directs with a precision that never shows its seams, letting the story unfold with the inevitability of fate and the tenderness of memory.

The setting — wartime Morocco, a crossroads of refugees, spies and dreamers — hums with tension and longing. Every line seems carved from history, every shadow charged with meaning. “Here’s looking at you, kid” isn’t just a farewell; it’s a benediction, a promise that love can survive even when the world is falling apart.

What makes Casablanca endure isn’t nostalgia but truth. Beneath the trench coats and cigarette smoke lies a moral clarity: the idea that doing the right thing may cost you everything, yet still be worth it. If you’ve never seen it, this is the moment to surrender to its spell — because some stories don’t just belong to cinema; they belong to us all.

8.30pm – BBC Two – Bonnie Tyler at the BBC

Bonnie Tyler, her music lives on. Picture credit: S. Kuelcue / Shutterstock.com

In the wake of Bonnie Tyler’s recent death, this tribute feels heavier than it otherwise might — not sombre, but weighted with the kind of reflection that arrives when a voice you assumed would always be there suddenly isn’t. The BBC digs into its archive and, in doing so, reminds you just how unmistakable she was. That rasp wasn’t a stylistic choice or a studio trick; it was her — lived‑in, weathered, defiant, capable of cutting straight through the gloss of any era.

Watching her early performances, you see the grit before the global fame, the way It’s a Heartache carried a rawness that set her apart from the polished pop of the late ’70s. Then comes the full‑throttle theatricality of Total Eclipse of the Heart, a song so outsized it could have swallowed a lesser singer whole. Tyler didn’t just survive it — she owned it, turning bombast into something strangely intimate.

This compilation charts a career that never really fit into neat categories. She could be pop, rock, power ballad, Eurovision, all at once, and still sound entirely like herself. Now, with her gone, these performances land differently: not just nostalgia, but a reminder of how rare it is for an artist to carve out a sound that can’t be mistaken for anyone else.

It’s a celebration, yes — but also a farewell to a voice that once filled stadiums and still somehow felt like it was singing directly to you.

9.00pm – Channel 4 – Gran Turismo (2023)

What sounds, on paper, like the most improbable of true stories turns out to be one of those sports dramas that sneaks up on you. Gran Turismo takes a teenager who mastered racing lines on a console and drops him into the brutal, unforgiving world of professional motorsport — and somehow makes that leap feel not just plausible, but thrilling.

The film has a glossy sheen, all high‑speed tracking shots and immaculate race sequences, but beneath the polish there’s a surprisingly grounded emotional core. You feel the weight of the risks, the sheer physicality of the sport, and the stubborn determination required to prove that a gamer can hold his own against seasoned drivers who’ve lived their entire lives on the track.

It’s slick, yes, but not hollow. The racing is exhilarating, the human story sincere, and the whole thing carries a pulse of genuine heart that keeps it from drifting into mere brand exercise. By the time the final lap arrives, you’re not thinking about the improbability of the premise — you’re simply caught up in the momentum of someone refusing to accept the limits placed on them.

10.20pm – BBC One – Gladiator (2000)

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator didn’t just revive the sword‑and‑sandal epic — it reshaped it, giving the genre a muscular emotional core it had rarely possessed. More than two decades on, the film still hits with the force of a battering ram. Russell Crowe’s Maximus remains one of those performances that seems carved from granite: stoic, wounded, driven by a sense of honour that feels almost archaic now, yet utterly compelling on screen.

The opening battle still crackles with energy, all smoke, mud and chaos, a reminder of how Scott can marshal spectacle without losing sight of character. And then there’s Hans Zimmer’s score — that soaring, mournful blend of orchestral heft and Lisa Gerrard’s haunting vocals. It’s the kind of music that doesn’t just accompany a film; it inhabits it, shaping the emotional landscape as surely as the Colosseum’s towering walls.

What keeps Gladiator alive, though, isn’t the scale but the sincerity. Beneath the armour and the bloodshed lies a story about loyalty, grief and the stubborn refusal to bow to corruption. It’s grand, yes, but never hollow — a blockbuster with a beating heart, still capable of stirring something deep even after countless re‑watches.

10.25pm – BBC Four – Monster (2023)

Hirokazu Kore‑eda has a gift for stories that unfold quietly, then suddenly take hold of you — and Monster might be his most intricate yet. It begins as one thing, then becomes another, then something else again, each shift peeling back another layer of assumption. What looks, at first glance, like a simple tale of a troubled schoolboy gradually reveals itself as a knot of perspectives, each one sincere, each one incomplete.

The film’s structure — replaying key events from different viewpoints — inevitably recalls Rashomon, but Kore‑eda uses the device with a gentler touch. Instead of dramatic reversals, you get slow realisations, the kind that make you sit back and reconsider everything you thought you understood. Adults misread children; children misread adults; everyone misreads everyone. Prejudice, fear and the urge to protect collide, and the truth emerges not as a single revelation but as a fragile, human mosaic.

By the time the final act arrives, the emotional weight is unmistakable. Kore‑eda isn’t interested in villains or heroes — only in the damage caused when people cling too tightly to their own version of events. It’s beautifully acted, beautifully judged, and quietly devastating.

Sunday 26 July

1.00pm–8.00pm – Sky History – Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire

An entire afternoon given over to the drama of ancient Rome is never time wasted. This series traces the city’s ascent with a storyteller’s instinct for momentum — legions pushing outward, generals carving their names into the map, and politicians sharpening their ambitions in the Senate’s shadow. You get the sweep of conquest, the theatre of intrigue, and the sheer audacity of an empire that believed its dominion would last forever.

What keeps it compelling is the way the programme shifts from triumph to fragility. The cracks appear slowly at first: overstretched borders, corrupt leadership, internal rivalries that fester until they become fatal. By the time the fall arrives, it feels less like a single event and more like a long, inevitable unravelling.

For anyone fascinated by the ancient world — its grandeur, its brutality, its lessons — this is richly satisfying viewing. It’s history presented with pace and clarity, the kind that leaves you thinking about how power rises, how it slips away, and how even the mightiest empires are never as permanent as they believe.

2.00pm – Sky Cinema Premiere – Eleanor the Great (2025)

This is one of those dramas that doesn’t shout for attention but earns it quietly, scene by scene. Eleanor the Great follows an older woman who refuses to accept the soft fade society expects of her — and the film treats that determination not as a grand rebellion, but as something tender, stubborn and deeply human.

There’s a warmth to it that never tips into sentimentality. You watch Eleanor navigate the small indignities and unexpected freedoms of later life, and the story unfolds with a kind of gentle confidence, trusting character over spectacle. The film’s strength lies in its detail: the pauses in conversation, the flicker of doubt before a decision, the sudden spark of joy when she realises she can still shape her own future.

It’s humane, understated and quietly defiant — the sort of mid‑afternoon premiere that leaves you thinking about the ways people reinvent themselves long after the world has stopped paying attention.

7.00pm – ITV1 – Force of Nature

(Box set on ITVX)

ITV’s latest wildlife series arrives with the kind of polish you expect from a Sunday‑night centrepiece, but what gives Force of Nature its pull is the sheer scale of what it captures. This isn’t a gentle amble through picturesque scenery; it’s a front‑row seat to the raw mechanics of the natural world, where survival is a daily negotiation and beauty often comes laced with danger.

Each episode zeroes in on a different environment, letting the drama emerge organically from the creatures that inhabit it. Predators stalk with unnerving patience, herds move like living weather systems, and the camera lingers just long enough to show how fragile the balance can be. There’s a rhythm to the storytelling — moments of stillness followed by bursts of tension — that keeps the series from feeling like a mere showcase of impressive shots.

The production values are unmistakably ITV: crisp visuals, sweeping aerials, and narration that guides rather than intrudes. It’s designed to appeal broadly, but it never talks down to its audience. Instead, it leans into the emotional weight of watching nature operate on its own terms, reminding you how much drama exists without a script.

As Sunday‑night viewing, it’s both soothing and gripping — a glossy, immersive wildlife programme that earns its place in the schedule by simply letting the natural world speak for itself.

8.00pm – BBC Four – John Wilson at the Proms

The Sinfonia of London performs Verdi’s exhilarating La Forza del Destino Overture, Walton’s lyrical Cello Concerto and Respighi’s dazzling Roman Trilogy. A rich evening for lovers of orchestral music.

8.00pm – BBC Four – Searching for Sam: Adrian Dunbar on Samuel Beckett

Adrian Dunbar explores the life and work of fellow Irishman Samuel Beckett, tracing the experiences that shaped one of the twentieth century’s most influential playwrights. Affectionate, thoughtful and illuminating.

8.00pm – Sky History – The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (1 of 2)

Continuing the day’s Roman theme, this documentary examines how the greatest empire of antiquity gradually succumbed to internal decay and external pressure.

9.00pm – BBC One – The Rapture (Part One)

(Box set on BBC iPlayer)

BBC One’s The Rapture opens its two‑night run with the kind of confidence that marks a genuine flagship drama. From the first scenes, it’s clear the BBC is aiming big: mystery, emotional tension, and a slow, unsettling sense that something is fundamentally wrong beneath the surface of ordinary life.

Part One introduces the central hook with admirable restraint. A sudden, unexplained global event — a moment of mass disappearance that leaves communities fractured and terrified — becomes the catalyst for the story. People vanish without warning, leaving those left behind scrambling for answers. The drama follows several characters trying to make sense of what’s happened: a mother searching for her missing son, a journalist piecing together contradictory accounts, and officials who seem as bewildered as everyone else. The plot doesn’t rush to explain the phenomenon; instead, it lets the confusion and fear settle in, giving the audience space to feel the shock alongside the characters.

Visually, the production has that moody BBC sheen: wide, atmospheric shots, a colour palette that shifts between domestic warmth and creeping dread, and a score that tightens its grip as the episode progresses. The direction favours stillness — long pauses, lingering looks — which makes the moments of panic land harder.

What elevates The Rapture beyond standard disaster drama is its emotional focus. The suspense grows out of human reactions: guilt, denial, desperation, the instinct to cling to any explanation that might make the world feel coherent again. The script understands that the real drama isn’t the event itself, but the way people respond when the rules of reality suddenly stop behaving.

As an opener, Part One is gripping, unsettling and impressively controlled. It sets up the mystery without overplaying it, builds characters you want to follow, and leaves you with the unmistakable sense that the real answers — and the real shocks — are waiting in Part Two. With the full box set already on iPlayer, resisting the urge to continue immediately will be difficult.

10.00pm – Channel 4 – The Forgiven (2021)

John Michael McDonagh’s The Forgiven is a drama that begins with a single catastrophic mistake and then spends the rest of its running time circling the moral fallout with a cold, unblinking eye. Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain play David and Jo Henninger, a wealthy, brittle couple travelling to a lavish weekend party in the Moroccan desert. On the drive there, David — drunk, irritable, and catastrophically careless — hits and kills a young local man. That moment becomes the film’s hinge: everything that follows is shaped by the collision between privilege and accountability, guilt and denial, Western detachment and local expectation.

The party they eventually arrive at is a bubble of decadence, hosted by Richard (Matt Smith) and Dally (Caleb Landry Jones), whose guests treat the accident as an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. McDonagh uses this setting to expose the casual cruelty of people insulated by wealth — the way they rationalise, minimise, and ultimately distance themselves from the consequences of their actions. Fiennes is superb as David, a man who initially tries to shrug off responsibility but slowly, almost unwillingly, begins to confront the enormity of what he’s done. Chastain, meanwhile, plays Jo with a cool detachment that gradually fractures as the moral pressure builds.

The film’s most compelling thread comes when the victim’s father arrives, insisting David accompany him to the remote village for the burial. What follows is not a revenge narrative but a cultural reckoning: a journey that forces David to face a community whose grief is real, whose anger is justified, and whose expectations of honour and restitution are far removed from the partygoers’ blasé worldview. The Moroccan landscape — harsh, vast, unforgiving — becomes an extension of the film’s themes, dwarfing the characters and stripping away their pretences.

McDonagh’s script is sharp, cynical and morally probing. He’s less interested in neat resolutions than in the uncomfortable spaces where guilt, arrogance and cultural misunderstanding collide. The film refuses to let its characters off the hook, yet it also avoids simplistic moral binaries. Everyone is compromised; everyone is flawed; everyone is, in some way, implicated.

The Forgiven is not a thriller in the conventional sense — its tension comes from character rather than plot — but it’s gripping, unsettling and quietly devastating. A drama that exposes the rot beneath privilege and asks what forgiveness really means when the damage cannot be undone.

10.00pm – BBC Two – Taxi Driver (1976)

Nearly fifty years on, Taxi Driver still feels like a live wire — a film that hasn’t dulled, softened or lost its sting. Martin Scorsese’s portrait of urban isolation remains one of the defining works of American cinema, a study of a man slipping through the cracks of society until the cracks become chasms.

Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle is the centre of that descent: a Vietnam veteran turned New York cabbie, prowling the city’s night streets with a gaze that’s equal parts fascination and disgust. De Niro’s performance is extraordinary in its restraint — the quiet, simmering unease, the clipped speech, the sense of a man trying to impose order on a world he no longer understands. Travis is unsettling not because he is monstrous, but because he is recognisably human, his alienation built from small, painfully ordinary moments.

Scorsese’s New York is a character in its own right: neon‑soaked, grimy, restless, a city that seems to sweat. The camera glides through it like a ghost, observing rather than judging, letting the environment press in on Travis until his worldview becomes claustrophobic. Bernard Herrmann’s final score — completed just before his death — adds a mournful, jazzy tension that perfectly matches the film’s mood.

The supporting cast deepens the film’s complexity. Jodie Foster, astonishingly young, brings a raw vulnerability to Iris, the teenage sex worker Travis fixates on saving. Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy represents a different kind of unreachable ideal — a symbol of normality Travis longs for but cannot inhabit. Their interactions reveal the gulf between Travis’s fantasies and the reality around him.

What makes Taxi Driver endure is its refusal to offer easy answers. It’s a film about loneliness, rage, delusion and the dangerous allure of self‑appointed heroism. Scorsese doesn’t moralise; he simply shows a man spiralling and a society unable — or unwilling — to notice.

The final act remains one of cinema’s most debated sequences, a violent eruption that is both cathartic and deeply troubling. Even now, Travis Bickle continues to unsettle, his story echoing through decades of cultural conversation about masculinity, alienation and the thin line between vigilante and victim.

A masterpiece of mood, character and moral ambiguity — and still, after all these years, a film that refuses to let you look away.

10.20pm – ITV1 – Terror in the Skies: Stopping the Liquid Bomb Plot

(Catch up on ITVX)

For nearly twenty years travellers have accepted strict limits on carrying liquids through airport security, often without knowing the extraordinary story behind them. This documentary revisits the 2006 investigation that uncovered an alleged conspiracy to destroy multiple transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives concealed in drinks bottles. Through archive footage and first-hand testimony, it explains how one counter-terrorism operation transformed air travel around the world.

11.50pm – BBC Two – The Elephant Man (1980)

David Lynch’s profoundly humane portrait of Joseph Merrick balances visual beauty with emotional power. John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins deliver performances of extraordinary compassion.

12.15am – Channel 4 – Stand by Me (1986)

Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novella captures childhood friendship with warmth, humour and heartbreaking honesty. Every viewing reminds you why it has become a modern classic.

Monday 27 July

9.00pm – BBC One – The Rapture (Part Two)

(Catch up on BBC iPlayer)

The concluding instalment of the BBC’s ambitious drama brings together the threads established the previous evening. Without giving too much away, the series proves less interested in easy shocks than in the emotional consequences of extraordinary events. Intelligent mainstream drama that trusts its audience.

9.00pm – Sky Cinema Drama – Passing (2021)

Rebecca Hall’s Passing is one of the most quietly devastating films of the past few years — a work of remarkable restraint, emotional intelligence and formal beauty. Adapting Nella Larsen’s 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel, Hall crafts a drama that feels both period‑precise and piercingly modern, exploring race, identity and the fragile performances people adopt to survive in a divided society.

The story centres on two childhood friends whose adult lives have diverged in stark, unsettling ways. Tessa Thompson plays Irene, a middle‑class Black woman navigating the social world of 1920s Harlem with careful composure. Ruth Negga is Clare, dazzling, impulsive and living a life built on a dangerous lie: she has chosen to pass as white, marrying a wealthy white man who is oblivious to her heritage. Their reunion sets off a slow, intimate unraveling — a dance of fascination, envy and unease that grows more charged with each encounter.

Hall’s direction is exquisite. Shot in luminous black and white, the film uses its visual palette not as a stylistic flourish but as a thematic anchor. The contrasts — light and shadow, clarity and obscurity — echo the characters’ inner conflicts. The 4:3 aspect ratio tightens the frame, creating a sense of emotional confinement that mirrors Irene’s increasingly brittle state of mind. Every composition feels deliberate, every silence weighted.

Thompson and Negga are superb. Thompson gives Irene a controlled, almost fragile dignity, a woman trying to maintain order in a world that keeps shifting beneath her feet. Negga, by contrast, is radiant and unsettling — Clare’s charm is irresistible, but there’s a desperation beneath it, a longing for belonging that makes her choices both understandable and tragic. Their scenes together crackle with tension, affection and something harder to name.

What makes Passing so powerful is its subtlety. Hall avoids melodrama, letting the emotional stakes build through glances, pauses, and the unspoken fears that accumulate between the two women. The film understands that identity is never fixed, that belonging can be both a refuge and a trap, and that the cost of reinvention can be devastating.

It’s a delicate, haunting piece of work — a film that lingers long after it ends, not because of any single dramatic moment, but because of the quiet ache running through every frame.

Tuesday 28 July

8.00pm – Sky Atlantic – The Vampire Lestat

Anne Rice’s immortal anti-hero finally steps further into the spotlight. Lavishly produced and unapologetically gothic, this continuation of the Interview with the Vampire universe revels in decadent performances, dark romance and centuries of intrigue. Fans of intelligent supernatural drama should feel very much at home.

9.00pm – Sky Atlantic – Gomorrah: The Origins

The acclaimed Neapolitan crime saga turns back the clock to examine the formative years of the criminal empire that shaped the original series. Expect moral ambiguity, relentless tension and an unflinching portrait of organised crime. If the standard matches its predecessor, this could become essential viewing.

9.00pm – BBC Four – The Madness of King George (1994)

Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s celebrated play remains one of the crown jewels of British historical cinema — a film that balances wit, sorrow and political sharpness with extraordinary finesse. Nearly three decades on, it still feels fresh, lively and emotionally piercing.

Nigel Hawthorne delivers a magnificent performance as George III, capturing the monarch’s eccentric charm, his flashes of sharp intelligence, and the heartbreaking unraveling that follows his descent into mental illness. Hawthorne’s portrayal is never one‑note: he is funny, irritable, vulnerable, imperious and frightened, often within the same scene. It’s a performance that makes the king’s suffering both tragic and strangely dignified.

The film charts not only George’s personal crisis but the political turmoil it triggers. As the king’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, Parliament circles like vultures, factions manoeuvre for advantage, and the question of who truly governs Britain becomes dangerously unstable. Bennett’s writing shines here — sharp, humane, and laced with the dry humour that prevents the drama from ever becoming heavy-handed.

Hytner’s direction brings theatrical precision without sacrificing cinematic sweep. The production design is sumptuous, the pacing brisk, and the tone perfectly judged: the film is never afraid to be funny, even in moments of deep sadness, which only heightens the emotional impact.

The supporting cast is a roll‑call of British acting talent at the top of their game. Helen Mirren is superb as Queen Charlotte, offering quiet strength and aching loyalty. Ian Holm’s Dr Willis brings a stern, unsettling authority, while Rupert Everett, Amanda Donohoe, Geoffrey Palmer and Julian Wadham all contribute richly textured performances that deepen the political and personal stakes.

What makes The Madness of King George endure is its humanity. It’s a story about power, vulnerability and the thin line between eccentricity and crisis — but above all, it’s about a man struggling to hold onto himself as the world around him shifts.

A beautifully crafted, deeply moving historical drama, and one of the finest ever produced in Britain.

10.45pm – Film4 – American Star (2024)

American Star is a far more reflective film than its logline suggests. On paper, it’s a thriller about an ageing contract killer sent to the Canary Islands for one final job. In practice, it’s a quiet, melancholy character study — a film that uses the trappings of a genre piece to explore loneliness, regret and the faint, flickering possibility of redemption.

Ian McShane is superb. He plays Wilson with a kind of worn‑down elegance: a man who has spent decades dealing death and now finds himself unexpectedly confronted by the weight of all those choices. McShane’s performance is understated, almost minimalist, but every pause, every glance, every half‑spoken line carries history. He’s a man who has lived too long in silence, and the film lets that silence speak.

The plot is deliberately spare. Wilson arrives on Fuerteventura expecting a straightforward assignment, only to find his target absent. That delay becomes the film’s engine. With nothing to do but wait, he drifts through the island, forming tentative connections with locals — a bartender, a young woman, a child — each encounter nudging him toward a kind of emotional thaw. The landscape itself becomes part of the story: vast, windswept, and indifferent, mirroring Wilson’s internal emptiness while offering him a strange, unexpected solace.

Director Gonzalo López‑Gallego keeps the pacing slow and meditative. The film favours long takes, quiet conversations and stretches of stillness where the only drama is what’s happening behind McShane’s eyes. It’s a bold choice, and it pays off. Rather than building tension through action, American Star builds it through introspection — the sense that Wilson is finally, perhaps fatally, reckoning with the man he has become.

There are thriller elements, yes — shadows of danger, hints of violence, the ever‑present question of whether Wilson will complete his mission — but they’re secondary to the film’s emotional core. This is a story about a man trying to understand whether redemption is possible when your life has been defined by harm.

Quiet, thoughtful and unexpectedly moving, American Star is a slow‑burn gem anchored by one of Ian McShane’s finest late‑career performances. It lingers not because of what happens, but because of what it dares to sit with: the loneliness of a life misspent, and the fragile hope that even at the end, change might still be possible.

11.05pm – BBC Two – The New Boy (2023)

(Also available on BBC iPlayer)

Warwick Thornton’s beautifully photographed Australian drama stars Aswan Reid alongside Cate Blanchett in the story of a mysterious Aboriginal boy brought to a remote monastery in the 1940s. Blending spirituality, colonial history and quiet magic realism, it unfolds at an unhurried pace, asking profound questions about faith, identity and cultural survival. A thoughtful, haunting film that rewards patience.

Wednesday 29 July

From 8.00am – PBS America – Ken Burns Day

(Catch up via Freeview Play)

PBS America celebrates the birthday of documentary master Ken Burns with a day devoted to the filmmaker whose meticulous historical series, including The Civil War, Baseball, The Vietnam War and Hemingway, helped redefine television documentary. It is an excellent opportunity to discover two earlier works that deserve to be much better known in Britain.

8.00am & 3.50pm – Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997)

Narrated by Hal Holbrook, Burns’s four-part series recounts the epic expedition that opened up the American West in the early nineteenth century. Richly illustrated with journals, paintings and Burns’s trademark blend of archive material and evocative narration, it turns one of America’s defining adventures into gripping television.

1.15pm & 8.50pm – Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip (2003)

One of Burns’s lighter and most charming films tells the unlikely story of Horatio Nelson Jackson, the first person to drive across the United States in 1903. Tom Hanks provides the voice of Jackson, while the documentary celebrates the spirit of adventure that accompanied the birth of the motor car. Quirky, affectionate and quietly inspiring.

9.00pm – BBC Two – Lucy Worsley Investigates: The Gunpowder Plot

Lucy Worsley has a gift for stripping away centuries of myth to reveal the complicated realities beneath familiar historical events. Here she revisits the Gunpowder Plot, questioning accepted narratives and examining the political and religious tensions that made 1605 one of the most turbulent years in English history. History presented with scholarship, warmth and genuine curiosity.

11.00pm – Film4 – The Florida Project (2017)

Sean Baker’s The Florida Project remains one of the most moving and quietly radical American films of the past decade — a portrait of childhood lived on the margins, told with compassion, vibrancy and an unflinching honesty that never slips into exploitation or sentimentality.

Set in the pastel‑coloured motels that sit in the long shadow of Walt Disney World, the film follows six‑year‑old Moonee and her young mother Halley as they navigate a precarious existence just outside the gates of a place built on fantasy. Baker uses this setting brilliantly: the proximity to Disney’s manufactured magic becomes a constant reminder of the gulf between the dreams sold to tourists and the harsh realities faced by the families living week‑to‑week in budget accommodation.

The young cast is astonishing. Brooklynn Prince’s performance as Moonee is one of the most natural and emotionally rich child performances in recent memory — mischievous, imaginative, fearless, and heartbreakingly unaware of how fragile her world is. Her scenes with her friends have a documentary‑like spontaneity, capturing the joy and chaos of childhood with remarkable authenticity.

Opposite her, Bria Vinaite brings raw, volatile energy to Halley, a mother doing everything she can to survive, even when her choices push her closer to disaster. The film never judges her; instead, it shows how systems fail people long before they fail themselves.

Willem Dafoe provides the film’s quiet anchor as Bobby, the motel manager who becomes an unofficial guardian to the children. It’s one of his finest performances — gentle, weary, and deeply humane. Bobby sees everything, understands more than he ever says, and tries to hold the chaos at bay with small acts of kindness that feel monumental in context.

Baker’s direction is vibrant and empathetic. Shot on 35mm, the film’s colours pop with almost storybook intensity, a visual echo of the children’s perspective. Yet beneath the brightness lies a growing tension, a sense that the fragile balance of Moonee’s life cannot hold forever.

The final scenes are devastating in their simplicity, capturing the collision between innocence and reality with a grace that stays with you.

11.15pm – BBC Four – Eye in the Sky (2015)

Gavin Hood’s Eye in the Sky is one of the most gripping and intellectually rigorous thrillers of the past decade — a film that understands that modern warfare is often fought not on battlefields, but in conference rooms, legal briefings and cramped control stations where every decision carries unbearable weight.

Helen Mirren leads the ensemble as Colonel Katherine Powell, a steely, determined officer overseeing a joint UK–US operation to capture high‑value terrorist targets in Kenya. What begins as a surveillance mission quickly escalates when the suspects prepare for a suicide attack, forcing Powell and her team to consider a drone strike. The complication — and the heart of the film — arrives in the form of a single innocent girl who wanders into the blast zone.

From that moment, Eye in the Sky becomes a tense moral crucible. The film meticulously examines the chain of command: military officials, legal advisers, politicians and drone operators all wrestling with the same impossible question — is it justifiable to kill one innocent person to save many others? Hood’s direction keeps the tension razor‑sharp without ever resorting to cheap theatrics. The drama comes from hesitation, debate, and the crushing responsibility of making a decision that cannot be undone.

Alan Rickman, in one of his final screen roles, is superb as Lieutenant General Frank Benson, bringing weary authority and quiet moral clarity to a character caught between political caution and human empathy. Aaron Paul adds emotional depth as the drone pilot struggling with the reality of what he may be asked to do.

What makes the film so effective is its restraint. It refuses to offer easy answers or tidy moral conclusions. Instead, it shows how modern warfare has become a web of ethical dilemmas, technological precision and human fallibility. Every character is forced to confront the limits of their own principles, and the audience is left to sit with the same discomfort.

Eye in the Sky is tense, intelligent and deeply unsettling — a thriller that grips not through action, but through the unbearable weight of choice.

Thursday 30 July

8.00pm – Sky Arts – Talking Pictures: 70s Legends

A nostalgic celebration of one of cinema’s greatest decades, when ambitious directors reshaped Hollywood and produced an astonishing run of classics. Packed with archive material and affectionate reminiscences, it is an ideal warm-up for the evening’s film.

9.00pm – BBC Two – Taxi Driver (1976)

If Sunday’s screening left you wanting another look, BBC Two obliges. Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece loses none of its power with repeated viewing. Robert De Niro’s lonely, damaged Travis Bickle remains one of cinema’s most unforgettable creations, while Bernard Herrmann’s haunting final score perfectly captures the film’s unsettling atmosphere.

9.00pm – Channel 5 – Benidorm’s Murder

A true-crime documentary exploring a case that shocked one of Britain’s favourite holiday destinations. Beyond the sensational headlines lies a thoughtful examination of the investigation and the human stories caught up in it.

9.00pm – Sky Documentaries – Ricky Gervais: Politics

This profile revisits Ricky Gervais’s provocative relationship with fame, comedy and public controversy. Whatever your view of him, there is no denying his influence on British comedy over the past quarter-century.

9.00pm – Sky Arts – The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee’s extraordinary life was every bit as remarkable as his screen career. Soldier, linguist, singer and one of cinema’s greatest horror icons, his story stretches from the Second World War to The Lord of the Rings. A fitting tribute to a uniquely fascinating actor.

10.00pm – Channel 4 – The Smuggling Business Undercover

An investigative documentary examining the sophisticated criminal networks that profit from smuggling and illegal trafficking. Sobering viewing that illustrates the global scale of organised crime.

10.30pm – Sky Arts – Hammer Heroes, Legends and Monsters

Hammer Heroes, Legends and Monsters is a richly enjoyable celebration of the studio that reshaped British horror and exported its gothic imagination to the world. Sky Arts approaches Hammer Films not as a relic of the past but as a creative force whose influence still pulses through modern genre cinema, and the result is a documentary that feels affectionate, informed and genuinely fun.

The programme traces Hammer’s rise from modest post‑war productions to its golden age of lurid colour, fog‑shrouded castles and unforgettable monsters. At the centre of it all, of course, are Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing — two actors whose partnership and contrasting styles helped define the studio’s identity. Lee’s imposing physicality and brooding menace, paired with Cushing’s precision, warmth and moral gravity, created a dynamic that elevated even the most outrageous storylines. Their performances remain the beating heart of Hammer’s legacy, and the documentary gives them the reverence they deserve.

Beyond its iconic stars, the film digs into the wider ensemble of writers, directors and character actors who contributed to Hammer’s unmistakable tone. It highlights how the studio blended theatricality with sincerity, turning limited budgets into atmospheric triumphs through clever lighting, bold production design and a willingness to push boundaries. Interviews and archival material underline just how influential Hammer became — not only in horror, but in shaping the visual language of genre filmmaking across Europe, America and beyond.

Sky Arts also acknowledges the cultural impact: Hammer’s films were controversial, adored, dismissed, rediscovered and ultimately canonised. Their blend of sensuality, violence and gothic excess paved the way for everything from modern vampire dramas to prestige horror. Even filmmakers who have never consciously imitated Hammer often borrow its rhythms, its colour palette, its sense of operatic dread.

As a tribute, Hammer Heroes, Legends and Monsters succeeds because it understands what made the studio special. It’s not just the monsters or the melodrama — it’s the craftsmanship, the commitment, and the actors who treated even the wildest scripts with absolute seriousness.

A warm, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable salute to the studio that turned British gothic horror into a global phenomenon.

11.00pm – Film4 – The Blackening (2022)

A knowing horror-comedy that cheerfully plays with the conventions of the slasher genre while poking fun at the clichés that have long defined Hollywood horror. Funny, inventive and far smarter than its premise initially suggests.

11.15pm – Sky Arts – National Theatre Live: Dr Strangelove

The National Theatre’s stage adaptation of Dr Strangelove is an audacious undertaking — not simply because Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film is one of the most iconic political satires ever made, but because its tone is so precise, its humour so razor‑edged, and its Cold War absurdity so indelibly tied to cinema. What’s remarkable is how confidently the NT reimagines it for the stage, finding fresh theatrical energy without losing the bite of the original.

Steve Coogan leads the production with a virtuoso turn, taking on multiple roles and leaning into the film’s darkly comic spirit while adding his own timing and physicality. He captures the manic logic of Kubrick’s world — the bureaucratic panic, the swaggering incompetence, the apocalyptic farce — and channels it through a performance that feels both affectionate and sharply contemporary.

The adaptation embraces theatricality rather than trying to mimic the film. The staging is inventive, using bold visual design, stylised movement and rapid shifts in tone to evoke the escalating madness of nuclear brinkmanship. The War Room scenes crackle with satirical tension, while the bomber sequences become surreal, almost vaudevillian riffs on military bravado.

What gives the production its staying power is how relevant it feels. The Cold War may have ended, but the themes — political ego, military overconfidence, technological escalation, the terrifying fragility of global stability — remain painfully current. The play doesn’t update the story so much as let today’s world echo through it, making the satire land with renewed force.

As a live theatrical event, Dr Strangelove is bold, funny, unsettling and impressively crafted. It honours Kubrick’s masterpiece while proving that its warnings — and its humour — still resonate powerfully on a stage in 2026.

Friday 31 July

9.00pm – Channel 5 – A Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox

Nearly two decades after the murder of Meredith Kercher, the Amanda Knox case continues to provoke fierce debate. This documentary revisits the investigation, the sensational media coverage and the legal twists that transformed a tragic crime into one of the defining true-crime stories of the twenty-first century.

9.00pm – PBS America – Britain’s Killer Wave of 1607

Could Britain’s greatest natural disaster have been a tsunami rather than a catastrophic storm surge? This fascinating documentary examines the evidence behind the mysterious flood that devastated communities around the Bristol Channel more than four centuries ago. History, geology and detective work combine to challenge long-held assumptions.

10.50pm – BBC Two – The Green Mile (1999)

Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile remains one of the most emotionally overwhelming experiences in mainstream American cinema — a film that takes its time, earns every tear, and builds a world where cruelty, compassion and the supernatural coexist with unsettling ease.

Set in a 1930s death‑row block, the story follows prison guard Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), whose steady moral compass is tested when a new inmate arrives: John Coffey, played with extraordinary gentleness by Michael Clarke Duncan. Coffey is a giant of a man, physically imposing yet childlike in demeanour, convicted of a horrific crime that he insists he did not commit. As Paul and his colleagues witness Coffey’s miraculous healing abilities, the film shifts from a straightforward prison drama into something more spiritual — a meditation on justice, suffering and the possibility of grace in the darkest places.

Hanks anchors the ensemble with quiet authority, giving Paul a decency that never feels sentimental. Duncan’s performance, meanwhile, is the film’s soul: dignified, wounded, and suffused with compassion. His portrayal of Coffey is one of the great feats of emotional acting in ’90s cinema, and it remains devastating.

Darabont directs with patience and confidence. The film is long — deliberately so — allowing relationships to deepen and moral dilemmas to unfold without haste. The supporting cast adds texture throughout: David Morse’s steady kindness, Doug Hutchison’s chilling cruelty, Sam Rockwell’s chaotic menace, and James Cromwell’s weary humanity. Each contributes to the film’s layered portrait of life inside “the Mile.”

What makes The Green Mile endure is its sincerity. It tackles capital punishment, systemic injustice and human frailty without preaching, instead inviting viewers to sit with the contradictions and heartbreaks of its world. The supernatural elements never feel gimmicky; they amplify the film’s emotional stakes, pushing its characters — and its audience — to confront the limits of mercy.

Richly rewarding, beautifully acted and emotionally shattering, The Green Mile remains one of the most affecting prison dramas ever made. It’s a film that stays with you long after the lights go down.

11.15pm – Channel 4 – Fresh (2022)

What begins as an offbeat modern romance takes an audacious turn into psychological horror. Sebastian Stan is chillingly charismatic in a film that skewers contemporary dating culture while never forgetting to entertain. Best approached knowing as little as possible.

Streaming

Prime Video – The Devil’s Mouth

(Available from Friday 25 July)

Prime’s latest original thriller follows a journalist drawn into a decades-old conspiracy that refuses to stay buried. Atmospheric and intelligently plotted, it promises the sort of slow-burning suspense that rewards careful attention rather than relying on cheap shocks.

YouTube – Together

(From Tuesday 28 July)

This independently produced documentary explores how communities rebuild trust after conflict and division. Thoughtful and quietly optimistic, it proves that some of the most rewarding viewing can still be found outside the major streaming platforms.

Disney+ – Furious

(From Monday 27 July)

A stylish new action series balancing spectacular set pieces with an unexpectedly strong emotional core. Slickly produced and fast-moving, it should appeal to anyone looking for escapist entertainment with a little more substance than usual.

HBO Max – President Curtis

(From Monday 27 July)

Political drama meets dark satire in this series imagining an unconventional presidency under intense public scrutiny. Cleverly written and sharply observed, it explores power, personality and modern media culture with equal wit.

Paramount+ – Primate

(From Wednesday 29 July)

Part thriller, part psychological drama, Primate examines ambition, scientific ethics and the sometimes uncomfortable relationship between human beings and the natural world. An intriguing addition to Paramount+’s growing catalogue of original drama.

Disney+ – The Devil Wears Prada 2

(From Wednesday 29 July)

Nearly two decades after the original became a cultural phenomenon, Miranda Priestly returns. Fashion, ambition and razor-sharp dialogue remain the order of the day, with the sequel aiming to introduce a new generation to one of cinema’s most memorable magazine editors.

Netflix – The Bombing of Pan Am 103

(From Thursday 30 July)

This six-part documentary begins in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie disaster, following the painstaking investigation into the bombing and the long search for answers. Combining testimony, archive material and forensic detail, it revisits one of the darkest chapters in modern British history with the seriousness and sensitivity the subject demands.

Radio

Saturday 25 July

8.00pm – Radio 4 – Archive on 4: The People’s Pool

Denise Mina tells the remarkable story of Glasgow’s Grade A-listed Govanhill Baths, once threatened with closure but ultimately saved through one of the longest occupations of a civic building in British history. Built to improve both public health and recreation, the baths embodied the belief that every child should leave able to swim, however modestly. More than a local history, this is a fascinating account of community activism, public ownership and determined resistance, illustrating how ordinary people can preserve institutions that matter long after official support has disappeared.

Monday 27 July

11.00pm – Radio 4 – Intimacy

Lena Headey stars in a thoughtful contemporary drama as an intimacy coordinator working on a film set in Greece whose carefully ordered professional life is unsettled by the unexpected arrival of someone from her past. A character-driven piece exploring memory, relationships and the emotional complexity that often lies beneath apparently controlled lives.

Tuesday 28 July

9.00am – Radio 4 – Invisible Hands: The American Century

David Dimbleby begins a new series examining how the United States emerged as the dominant global power during the twentieth century. Characteristically measured and richly informed, the series promises to combine political history with the personalities, ideas and events that reshaped the modern world.

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Archive for Streaming

Saturday 17 October

North by Northwest (1959) — BBC Two, 2.15pm

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) — Talking Pictures TV, 4pm

Talking Pictures: World Cinema Classics — BBC Four, 9pm

American Star (2024) — Film4, 9pm

The Everly Brothers: Harmonies from Heaven — Sky Arts, 9pm; NOW catch-up

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) — BBC Four, 9.45pm

Death Race 2000 (1975) — Great Action, 11.25pm

Saint Maud (2019) — Film4, 1.15am, early Sunday

Sunday 18 October

The Addams Family (1991) — ITV2, 4pm

The Balkans: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier — BBC Two, 8pm

Kevin McCloud’s Classic Car Road Trips — Channel 4, 8pm (1/6)

Living (2022) — Film4, 9pm

Time — BBC One, 9pm (series finale; full series on iPlayer)

French Connection II (1975) — Talking Pictures TV, 10.10pm

Priscilla (2023) — BBC Two, 10.45pm

Children of Men (2006) — BBC One, 11.40pm

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024) — Channel 4, midnight, early Monday

Monday 19 October

Aberfan: The Village That Fought Back — BBC Two, 9pm; repeated Tuesday, 11pm

Selma (2014) — BBC Two, 11.05pm

Priyo Maloti (2024) — Channel 4, South Asian film season; time to be confirmed

Tuesday 20 October

Hot Fuzz (2007) — Film4, 9pm

Stacey Dooley: Down the K-Hole — BBC Three, 9pm; BBC One, 10.40pm

Clickbait Clinic with Stacey Dooley: Can Blue Dye Make Me Smarter? — BBC One, 11.40pm

Midnight Run (1988) — Film4, 11.25pm

Storyville: A Want in Her — BBC Four; time to be confirmed

Wednesday 21 October

Caligula’s Hidden Legacy — PBS America, 7.05pm (1/2)

The World’s End (2013) — Film4, 9pm

The Experiment — Channel 4, 10pm

Alison Steadman Remembers The Singing Detective — BBC Four, 10pm

The Singing Detective: Lovely Days, Stroke Clues — BBC Four, 10.15pm

Night of the Demon (1957) — Talking Pictures TV, 9.10pm

Stacey Dooley: Rape on Trial — BBC Three, 11pm (1/2) and 11.50pm (2/2)

Thursday 22 October

Mercury Prize: Album of the Year — BBC Four, 9.30pm

Sweat (2020) — Film4, 1.40am, early Friday

Friday 23 October

Sicily: The Conquered Isle — PBS America, 7.10pm and 8.30pm

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) — Great Action, 9pm

Disco Night — BBC Four, from 9.45pm; BBC iPlayer

The Blackening (2022) — BBC Two, 11.30pm

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution — BBC Four, 12.15am, early Saturday

I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol — Sky Arts, 1am, early Saturday

The Public Image Is Rotten — Sky Arts, 2.50am, early Saturday

Streaming

Netflix

Channel 4 Streaming

Prime Video

BBC iPlayer

Paramount+

HBO Max

Radio

Sunday 18 October

Monday 19 October

Tuesday 20 October

Final Thoughts

Saturday 12 September

Sunday 13 September

Monday 14 September

Tuesday 15 September

Wednesday 16 September

Thursday 17 September

Friday 18 September

Streaming

Radio

The Opening: A False Calm

The Case That Defines Him

Patrick Jane: The Broken Magician

The Ensemble: Friction and Balance

Craft and Direction

Themes That Haunt the Series

Why It Endures

Saturday 1 August

Sunday 2 August

Monday 3 August

Patrick Jane: The Broken Magician