There’s a distinctly end-of-summer feel to this week’s Culture Vulture, but the schedules are far from winding down. In fact, there’s a very strong run of films across the week, some returning television favourites and a streaming slate which ranges from period crime to superheroes and prestige drama.
Three things stand out for me. First, BBC Two gives us the complete Godfather trilogy across Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Whatever your view of the third film, that is still quite a proposition.
Secondly, there’s an excellent musical thread running through the weekend, from Wham! and the Beach Boys to the Mamas and the Papas, not forgetting a Proms evening devoted to James Bond. And finally, Gogglebox returns for its 28th series on Friday. There are programmes which reinvent television and programmes which simply understand television. Gogglebox has always belonged rather comfortably in the second category.
Here’s what caught my eye.
Saturday 29 August
6.10pm, PBS America — Athens: Birthplace of Democracy
A look back to the city and political culture which gave the Western world one of its most enduring — if frequently contested — ideas.
7.30pm, BBC Two — BBC Proms: Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser Has a Licence to Thrill
Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser and the BBC Concert Orchestra turn their attention to the music of James Bond. Bond themes have always been unusually ambitious bits of popular music in their own right, so there is plenty here for an orchestra to get its teeth into. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.
9pm, BBC Four — Kabul
Drama set against the chaos surrounding the fall of Kabul in August 2021. The full series is available on BBC iPlayer.
9pm, Sky Arts — Chaplin (1992)
Attenborough’s sweeping biopic isn’t shy about its own grandeur, and Robert Downey Jr meets that scale with a performance that’s all quicksilver brilliance and bruised vulnerability. He doesn’t impersonate Chaplin so much as inhabit him — the physical precision, the darting intelligence, the melancholy that sits just behind the eyes. It’s a turn that reminds you how astonishingly gifted Downey was even before his later reinventions.
The film itself is a handsome, old‑school studio epic: big sets, big emotions, big narrative leaps. Attenborough charts Chaplin’s rise from poverty to global fame with a kind of museum‑quality reverence, but he’s at his best when he lets the cracks show — the political battles, the personal failings, the way genius and ego grind against each other. The supporting cast is a parade of familiar faces, each dropping in to sketch a moment in Chaplin’s turbulent life, but it’s Downey who keeps the whole thing alive, electric, and strangely intimate.
Not a perfect film, but a fascinating one — and worth revisiting for a performance that still feels like lightning in a bottle.
9pm — Wham! 10 Days in China
A look at Wham!’s groundbreaking 1985 visit to China, when George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley became the first major Western pop act to tour the country.
10.25pm, BBC Two — Wham! at the BBC
More George and Andrew, this time through the BBC archives.
10.30pm, Channel 5 — Kinky Boots (2005)
A film that knows exactly what it’s doing and does it with a grin. Kinky Boots takes the very real anxieties of a failing Northampton shoe factory and spins them into a buoyant, big‑hearted fable about reinvention. The premise — pivoting from sturdy brogues to flamboyant, high‑heeled fetish boots — is inherently comic, but the charm lies in how sincerely it treats the people involved.
Joel Edgerton gives the factory’s reluctant heir a nicely rumpled decency, but it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor who detonates the film’s energy. His Lola is a force of nature: glamorous, sharp, wounded, and utterly magnetic. Every scene he’s in lifts the film from gentle workplace comedy into something with real emotional voltage. The dynamic between Lola and the factory lads — suspicion giving way to curiosity, then respect — is handled with a light touch that never tips into sermonising.
It’s a story about survival, pride, and the unexpected places solidarity can bloom. Warm, funny, and quietly radical in its insistence that tradition and transformation don’t have to be enemies. A crowd‑pleaser with a bit of steel in its spine.
1.35am, BBC Two — Compartment No. 6 (2021)
A film that moves in small, almost imperceptible shifts — the kind that creep up on you and suddenly feel enormous. Compartment No. 6 traps two strangers in the narrow, rattling purgatory of a long train ride: a Finnish archaeology student fleeing a complicated relationship, and a Russian miner whose bluntness initially feels like a personal attack. It begins in discomfort — the kind of social claustrophobia anyone who’s ever been stuck in the wrong carriage at the wrong time will recognise.
What follows is beautifully observed, never hurried. Director Juho Kuosmanen has a gift for noticing the tiny gestures that reveal people: a half‑smile, a defensive shrug, the way irritation softens into curiosity. The film’s great strength is its refusal to force intimacy; instead, it lets connection emerge in the gaps between language, in shared cigarettes, in the bleak humour of bad weather and worse circumstances.
The Arctic Circle looms like a metaphor — cold, distant, unreachable — yet the journey towards it becomes unexpectedly warm. By the time the train judders into its final stops, the film has quietly built something tender out of loneliness, miscommunication and the strange, fragile alliances that form when two people have nowhere else to go.
Sunday 30 August
5.25pm, Sky Arts — The Beach Boys: Endless Harmony
The Beach Boys story told through archive footage, music and the complicated relationships behind all those immaculate harmonies.
5.25pm, BBC Two — The Italian Job (1969)
A film so woven into British pop culture that it barely needs announcing — but it deserves celebrating. The Italian Job remains the purest expression of late‑60s swagger: Michael Caine at his most effortlessly charismatic, a caper built on cheek and precision, and a vision of Britain that believed ingenuity could outshine brute force.
Everything about it is engineered for delight. The Minis — red, white and blue — dart through Turin with balletic confidence, turning the city into a playground of tunnels, rooftops and improbable escape routes. Quincy Jones’ score snaps and struts. The supporting cast, from Noël Coward’s magnificently patrician Mr Bridger to Benny Hill’s chaotic cameo, adds texture to the film’s comic‑criminal ecosystem.
And then there’s that ending. The bus, the cliff, the gold, the unresolved teeter that has fuelled half a century of debate. It’s the perfect final note: audacious, funny, and refusing to tidy itself away. A caper that knows the value of leaving you suspended — grinning, guessing, and wanting just a little more.
6.20pm, ITV4 — Waterloo (1970)
Bondarchuk’s thunderous epic of Napoleon’s last stand still has the power to astonish. Before computers made massed battles a matter of software, this was done the hard way: tens of thousands of real soldiers manoeuvred across vast fields, cavalry charges thundering through smoke, and artillery barrages staged with unnerving force.
Rod Steiger gives a brooding, volatile Napoleon; Christopher Plummer’s Wellington is all cool calculation. But the real star is the scale — the sheer logistical madness of recreating Waterloo with such detail and weight. It’s old‑school spectacle, the kind that reminds you what cinema can do when ambition meets an army.
7pm, BBC One — Hamza: African Birds of Prey
Hamza Yassin turns his attention to Africa’s magnificent birds of prey. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.
7.40pm, Sky Arts — California Dreaming: The Songs of the Mamas and the Papas
The music and story of one of the defining vocal groups of the 1960s.
9pm, Film4 — A Few Good Men (1992)
Cruise brings the drive; Nicholson brings the detonation. Rob Reiner’s military courtroom drama is sharply written and tightly paced, but it’s Nicholson who tilts the whole thing on its axis. As Colonel Jessup, he strides in late, occupies the film for barely a handful of scenes, and still manages to dominate it through sheer force of personality.
Cruise’s young Navy lawyer pushes, probes and tries to stay upright under the weight of the institution he’s challenging, but the film’s electricity comes from the collision between the two men — idealism meeting absolute authority. By the time Nicholson delivers his famous tirade, the verdict is already in: he steals the picture cleanly, confidently, and without breaking a sweat.
9pm, BBC One — Vigil
The thriller returns to the schedules, with the full series available on BBC iPlayer.
9pm, ITV1 — Trigger Point
More bomb disposal tension, with the full series available on ITVX.
10pm, BBC Two — The Godfather (1972)
Coppola’s first chapter in the Corleone saga remains one of cinema’s great acts of world‑building: shadowed rooms, whispered loyalties, and violence delivered with ritualistic calm. Brando’s Vito is the film’s centre of gravity, a weary patriarch whose authority seems to bend the air around him.
But it’s Pacino who quietly reshapes the story. His Michael begins as the outsider — the son who insists he’s not part of the family business — and Pacino plays those early scenes with a stillness that barely registers as ambition. Across three hours, that stillness hardens. Every decision, every silence, every glance nudges him further into the darkness.
By the time he closes the door in the final shot, the transformation is complete: a man who thought he could stand apart has become the very thing he feared. It’s one of the most controlled, chilling performances ever put on film.
11pm, Yesterday — Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In (2021)
A portrait of Ferguson that refuses to settle for the familiar mythology. Yes, the football is there — the trophies, the authority, the ferocious competitive instinct — but the documentary’s real interest lies elsewhere. It looks at the man after the noise has faded: his childhood, his marriage, the rhythms of family life, and the frightening vulnerability of his 2018 brain haemorrhage.
What emerges is a study in memory and mortality. Ferguson reflects on the past not as a sequence of victories but as a series of turning points, losses, recoveries, and the people who shaped him. The film’s quietness is its strength. It shows how someone defined by control confronts the one thing he cannot command: time.
Bank Holiday Monday 31 August
7pm, Sky Arts — Six Minutes to Midnight (2019)
A quietly tense pre‑war thriller with a premise that feels almost too strange to be true: an English finishing school on the Sussex coast where the daughters of high‑ranking Nazi officials are being groomed into perfect ambassadors for the Reich. Eddie Izzard plays a teacher who stumbles into a web of espionage, suspicion and political brinkmanship as Europe edges towards catastrophe.
The film mixes seaside gentility with gathering storm clouds — polite manners, crisp uniforms and the unsettling sense that something poisonous is being cultivated behind closed doors. It’s a story about loyalty, identity and the danger of looking away just when history is about to turn.
8pm, BBC One — The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
One of Edinburgh’s great annual spectacles, with massed bands, military precision and the Castle providing a backdrop television could scarcely improve upon.
10.30pm, BBC Two — The Godfather Part II (1974)
11pm, BBC One — Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
The film that turned Richard Curtis’s brand of romantic comedy into a global export. Hugh Grant’s stammering charm was already familiar, but here it crystallised into something irresistible: the diffident Englishman who can’t quite get out of his own way.
What’s easy to forget is just how big a cultural moment this was. A modestly budgeted British film that became an international phenomenon, reshaping the genre for a decade and launching a wave of imitators. Its mix of sharp wit, emotional honesty and unabashed sentiment still works because it never sneers at its characters — it lets them be awkward, hopeful, foolish and occasionally profound.
11.30pm, Film4 — Carol (2015)
Todd Haynes crafts this with exquisite control — every glance, every pause, every shift in light doing as much storytelling as the dialogue. Cate Blanchett’s Carol is poised, elegant, and quietly aching; Rooney Mara’s Therese is all tentative curiosity, drawn into a relationship that feels both impossible and inevitable.
The film moves like a piece of chamber music: restrained, precise, and emotionally devastating in its quietest moments. Haynes lets the 1950s setting press in from all sides — the social constraints, the unspoken rules — while never losing sight of the tenderness at the centre.
2.50am, Channel 4 — Sick of Myself (2022)
A pitch‑black Norwegian comedy that treats narcissism like a competitive sport. The film follows a young woman so desperate to stay at the centre of everyone’s attention that she escalates her behaviour from petty manipulation to outright self‑harm, all in the name of sympathy, notoriety and social currency.
It’s viciously funny and deeply uncomfortable — a satire of performative culture where every gesture is a bid for relevance and every relationship becomes collateral damage. The further she pushes things, the more horrifying and absurd it becomes, until you’re laughing and wincing in the same breath.
A brutally sharp look at the hunger to be seen, and the chaos that follows when that hunger becomes the whole personality.
Tuesday 1 September
3.10pm, Film4 — Send Me No Flowers (1964)
One of the most purely enjoyable Day–Hudson comedies, built on a premise so daft it becomes irresistible. Rock Hudson’s hypochondriac is convinced he’s dying, and in a fit of misguided gallantry decides the best thing he can do for Doris Day’s devoted wife is to line up her next husband.
What follows is a bright, breezy spiral of misunderstandings, jealousies and suburban chaos, powered by the duo’s effortless chemistry and a script that knows exactly how to let them sparkle. It’s feather‑light, colourful and cheerfully silly — the kind of comedy that feels like opening a window on a sunnier world.
5.15pm, Film4 — Spartacus (1960)
Kubrick’s Roman epic is colossal in every sense, but its most radical force sits behind the camera. Spartacus is the film that helped break the Hollywood blacklist: Kirk Douglas insisted that Dalton Trumbo — one of the “Hollywood Ten,” jailed and exiled from the industry for refusing to name names during the McCarthy anti‑Communist purges — be credited under his own name. It was an act of defiance that changed careers and cracked open one of the ugliest chapters in American film history.
On screen, the scale is staggering. Douglas’s Spartacus leads a slave revolt that feels genuinely seismic, and Laurence Olivier presides over Rome with icy patrician menace. Kubrick marshals armies, landscapes and political intrigue with a precision that still impresses, but the film’s heartbeat is its politics — both the rebellion it depicts and the one it quietly enacted in Hollywood.
A landmark of spectacle and a landmark of resistance.
9pm, BBC Three — Scamanda
A four-part documentary telling the extraordinary story of Amanda Riley, whose fraudulent cancer story deceived thousands.
11pm, BBC Four — I Am Martin Parr
A portrait of one of Britain’s most distinctive photographers. Available on BBC iPlayer.
11.05pm, BBC Two — The Godfather Part III (1990)
The trilogy’s closing chapter has lived in the shadow of its predecessors for decades, but taken on its own terms it’s a sombre, compelling epilogue. Coppola shifts the tone from operatic violence to something more reflective: a story about age, regret and the impossibility of outrunning one’s past.
Pacino’s Michael is older, wearier, and haunted by the choices that built his empire. The performance is fascinating — the coiled intensity is still there, but now it’s tempered by guilt and a longing for legitimacy that he can never quite grasp. Andy García brings volatile energy as Vincent, the heir apparent, while the film’s Vatican‑entangled plot adds a layer of moral rot that feels entirely appropriate for Michael’s final act.
It may not reach the heights of the first two films, but there is real power in watching a man who once controlled everything realise that the bill for his sins has finally come due.
11.45pm, Film4 — Journeyman (2017)
Paddy Considine’s second feature is a quietly devastating piece of work — intimate, unshowy and emotionally exact. He writes, directs and stars as Matty Burton, a middleweight boxer whose life is shattered by a catastrophic brain injury sustained during a title defence. What begins as a familiar sports narrative turns into something far more fragile: a study of identity, recovery and the terrifying uncertainty of a mind that no longer behaves as it once did.
Considine’s performance is remarkable in its vulnerability, and Jodie Whittaker matches him beat for beat as a partner trying to hold together a life that has suddenly come apart. The film never tips into melodrama; it stays close to the small, painful details of rehabilitation — the confusion, the anger, the flickers of hope.
A moving, humane drama about rebuilding from the inside out.
.1.35am, Film4 — Pixie (2020)
A darkly comic Irish caper that plays everything with a wink and a threat. Olivia Cooke is terrific as Pixie, a young woman whose charm is matched only by her talent for trouble. After a heist goes sideways, she heads off across rural Ireland with two hapless accomplices, a bag of stolen drugs and a growing list of very dangerous people trying to catch up.
The tone is gleefully off‑kilter — gun‑toting priests, eccentric gangsters, sharp dialogue and a sense that every decision is making things worse in a slightly hilarious way. Cooke anchors it all with a performance that’s sly, unpredictable and enormous fun. A lively late‑night watch with a streak of mischief running right through it.
Wednesday 2 September
10.55pm, Legend — The Fighter (2010)
A tough, lived‑in boxing drama that works because it’s really about the people orbiting the ring rather than the punches thrown inside it. Mark Wahlberg plays Micky Ward with understated grit, but the film’s charge comes from Christian Bale as Dicky Eklund — a former fighter, now a chaotic, crack‑addicted mentor whose glory days have curdled into delusion.
Bale doesn’t just play Dicky; he disappears into him. The jittery energy, the compulsive charm, the self‑sabotage — it’s all there, and it gives the film a rawness that most sports biopics never touch. Amy Adams adds steel as Charlene, the woman trying to pull Micky out of the gravitational pull of his family, while David O. Russell keeps the whole thing moving with bruising momentum.
A story about loyalty, damage and the fight to break free, anchored by one of Bale’s most ferociously committed performances.
Thursday 3 September
12.55pm, Legend — The Assassination Bureau (1969)
A wonderfully odd slice of Edwardian mischief, pitched somewhere between black comedy, adventure caper and social satire. Oliver Reed plays Ivan Dragomiloff, the suavely amoral head of a professional organisation devoted to murder-for-hire — a gentlemanly league of assassins who treat killing as a matter of honour, etiquette and contractual obligation.
Diana Rigg, sharp as ever, enters the story as a journalist determined to expose the Bureau’s existence. Her plan? Commission them to kill their own leader. What follows is a playful chase across Europe, full of elaborate assassination attempts, period charm and a tone that winks at the audience without ever tipping into outright farce.
It’s eccentric, stylish and very much its own thing — a late‑60s curiosity powered by Reed’s swagger and Rigg’s impeccable wit.
2.35pm, Talking Pictures TV — The Durant Affair (1962)
A compact, no‑nonsense British crime drama, the sort of film Talking Pictures excels at rescuing from obscurity. The Durant Affair sits firmly in that fascinating corner of early‑60s British cinema where modest budgets, tight scripts and character actors doing solid work combine into something unexpectedly engaging.
It’s not a headline title, and that’s precisely the appeal. These lesser‑screened crime pictures offer a snapshot of a filmmaking culture that was grittier, more workmanlike and often more inventive than the prestige productions of the era. If you enjoy digging into the hidden shelves of British film history, this is exactly the kind of curio that rewards the effort.
9pm, GREAT! TV — Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
One of the crown jewels of Ealing comedy: elegant, wicked and delivered with a straight face sharp enough to cut glass. Dennis Price is superb as Louis Mazzini, the impeccably polite young man who decides that a handful of inconvenient relatives stand between him and a dukedom — a problem he approaches with calm, murderous efficiency.
Alec Guinness’s tour‑de‑force turn is the film’s great delight: he plays almost the entire D’Ascoyne family, from fussy parsons to pompous admirals to suffragette firebrands, each performance perfectly judged and slyly exaggerated without ever breaking the film’s refined tone.
It’s a comedy of manners wrapped around a string of killings, delivered with such charm and precision that its darkness feels positively civilised. A masterpiece of dry British wit.
9pm, BBC Two — A House Through Time
David Olusoga continues his exploration of the lives hidden within the history of a single house. The full series is available on BBC iPlayer.
12.05am, BBC Two — Respect (2021)
Jennifer Hudson doesn’t just play Aretha Franklin — she channels her. The film follows Franklin’s rise from a prodigiously gifted church singer to the undisputed Queen of Soul, tracing the battles she fought both publicly and privately to claim her voice, her artistry and her autonomy.
Hudson’s performance is the anchor: vocally astonishing, emotionally grounded, and delivered with a reverence that never slips into imitation. The film moves through the key chapters — the early gospel years, the breakthrough hits, the personal struggles, the political awakening — with a warmth that honours Franklin’s legacy even when confronting its darker corners.
It’s a conventional music biopic in structure, but the power of the story and the sheer force of Hudson’s presence make it resonate. A celebration of a singular talent and the long, hard road she walked to become herself.
Friday 4 September
9pm, ITV2 — The Dark Knight (2008)
Christopher Nolan’s Batman film remains a defining moment in modern superhero cinema — muscular, morally tangled and executed with a seriousness that reshaped what the genre could be. But its gravitational centre is, of course, Heath Ledger’s Joker, a performance so ferociously alive it still feels dangerous.
Ledger’s Joker isn’t a villain with a plan; he’s an agent of rupture. Everything about him — the smeared makeup, the hunched posture, the voice that slides between mock‑polite and feral — suggests someone who has studied human behaviour purely to learn how best to unsettle it. He isn’t interested in money or power; he wants to expose the fragility of order, to prove that civilisation is only ever one bad day away from collapse.
The brilliance of the performance is its unpredictability. Ledger plays him as a man who delights in rewriting the rules mid‑sentence, whose jokes land like threats and whose threats land like philosophy. Every scene tightens because you genuinely don’t know what he’ll do next. It’s not just a great comic‑book villain; it’s one of the great screen performances of the century.
Around him, Christian Bale’s Batman and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent form the film’s moral spine, but Ledger is the spark that turns the whole thing into a battle for the soul of Gotham. A landmark — and a reminder of how one extraordinary performance can tilt an entire film into legend.
9pm, Legend — Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Sergio Leone’s final film is a vast, mournful gangster epic — less interested in crime than in the long shadows it casts over a life. Robert De Niro’s Noodles drifts through the story like a man permanently out of time, haunted by friendships broken, betrayals committed and memories that refuse to settle into anything stable.
Leone tells the tale at an unhurried, almost dreamlike pace. Scenes unfold with the weight of recollection rather than the urgency of plot: childhood in the Jewish ghettos of New York, the rise into organised crime, the fractures that tear the group apart, and the decades‑later reckoning that may or may not be real. The film’s structure — looping between eras, blurring the line between what happened and what Noodles believes happened — gives it a melancholy that’s closer to elegy than thriller.
De Niro is superb, playing Noodles as a man defined by regret, while James Woods brings electric volatility as Max, the friend whose ambition becomes a kind of curse. Ennio Morricone’s score does the rest, bathing the film in sorrow and nostalgia.
A sprawling, hypnotic masterpiece — a gangster film that moves at the pace of memory, and hits with the force of everything time refuses to heal.
9pm, Channel 4 — Gogglebox
It’s back for its 28th series. The format remains ridiculously simple — people watching television while we watch them — but when the casting works, so does the programme. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.
9.20pm, Talking Pictures TV — Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)
One of Hammer’s strangest and most intriguing late‑period horrors — a gender‑swapping twist on Robert Louis Stevenson that lets the studio lean into both gothic melodrama and something far more subversive. Ralph Bates plays Dr Jekyll as a driven, increasingly unhinged scientist whose experiments in extending human life lead him to create a female alter ego: Sister Hyde, played with icy poise by Martine Beswick.
The transformation conceit gives Hammer room to explore identity, repression and desire in a way that feels unusually bold for the era. Sister Hyde isn’t just a murderous counterpart; she’s a manifestation of everything Jekyll fears and covets, a figure who moves through Victorian London with a confidence and sensuality that destabilises him completely.
It’s lurid, atmospheric and knowingly provocative — a film that takes a familiar story and twists it into something slyly transgressive. One of Hammer’s more unusual delights.
11.05pm, BBC Two — Harvest (2024)
Streaming
Netflix
Monster’s Ball — available now
A stark, emotionally bruising drama that moves with a quiet, deliberate intensity. Set against the backdrop of America’s deep racial and social fractures, the film follows two people whose lives have been shaped by grief, anger and generational damage, and who find themselves drawn together in circumstances that should make connection impossible.
What gives the film its power is the restraint: the performances are raw without ever tipping into melodrama, and the story unfolds in small, painful increments. It’s a film about the weight people carry, the ways they fail each other, and the fragile possibility of redemption. Hard‑hitting, but worth the emotional toll.
H Is for Hawk — available now
This adaptation of Helen Macdonald’s acclaimed memoir captures the strange, intimate process of training a goshawk while navigating overwhelming grief. It’s part nature study, part psychological portrait, and part meditation on how humans seek meaning in the wild when their own lives feel unmanageable.
The film leans into the book’s reflective tone, lingering on landscape, silence and the uneasy bond between handler and bird. It’s gentle but piercing, a story about control, surrender and the ways we try to rebuild ourselves through ritual and obsession. A beautifully made piece of contemplative nonfiction.
The Gentlemen — Season 2, from Thursday 3 September
Guy Ritchie’s criminal world returns for a second series, and it’s as swaggering, chaotic and sharply dressed as ever. The new run expands the turf wars, double‑crosses and entrepreneurial villainy that defined the first season, giving the ensemble more room to stretch into their particular flavours of misbehaviour.
There’s a confidence to the storytelling now: the humour is darker, the schemes more elaborate, and the tone sits comfortably between crime thriller and high‑end mischief. If you enjoyed the first season’s mix of violence, charm and sheer audacity, Season 2 doubles down on all of it.
Channel 4 Streaming / Walter Presents
Cold Courage — all episodes from Tuesday 1 September
A tense, politically charged thriller that follows two women drawn into a shadowy organisation dedicated to exposing corruption. The series moves between London’s media world, far‑right extremism and the murky spaces where influence and intimidation overlap, giving it a contemporary edge that feels uncomfortably close to reality.
What stands out is the character work: both leads are damaged, determined and navigating trauma while trying to dismantle something far bigger than themselves. It’s stylish, tightly plotted and full of the kind of moral ambiguity Walter Presents specialises in.
Devil’s Throat: The Demon’s Fall
A Bulgarian thriller steeped in folklore, superstition and the darker corners of rural life. The series blends procedural investigation with mythic undertones, creating an atmosphere where every discovery feels like it might be pointing toward something older and more unsettling than simple criminality.
The pacing is deliberate, the visuals striking, and the tension builds from the clash between modern policing and ancient belief. It’s one of those shows that creeps under the skin — not loud, but quietly unnerving.
Paramount+
Humans — all episodes from Thursday 3 September
A return to one of the most thoughtful sci‑fi dramas of recent years. Humans explores artificial intelligence not through spectacle but through domestic life, asking what happens when synthetic beings become indistinguishable from the people they serve.
The new availability of all episodes gives viewers the chance to appreciate the show’s slow‑burn evolution: from questions of labour and autonomy to full‑blown debates about consciousness, rights and revolution. It’s smart, grounded and emotionally resonant — sci‑fi with something real to say.
Sweden: Demons Fall — Series 2, from Friday 4 September
The second series deepens the supernatural mystery at the heart of this Swedish thriller. What began as a story of strange occurrences in a remote community now expands into a broader exploration of belief, fear and the legacies families try to outrun.
Series 2 is moodier, more ambitious and visually striking, with a stronger sense of dread threading through each episode. It’s Nordic noir with a supernatural twist — cold, atmospheric and compelling.
Prime Video
Mother Mary — available now
A bold, stylised drama that plays with the idea of celebrity myth‑making. The film follows a pop icon whose life becomes the subject of a sprawling biographical project, blurring the lines between truth, performance and the narratives artists build around themselves.
It’s visually lush and musically driven, with a central performance that embraces both the glamour and the vulnerability of fame. The film asks what it means to be seen, and what gets lost when a person becomes a symbol. Ambitious, intriguing and full of texture.
Disney+
The Mandalorian and Grogu — from Wednesday 2 September
The Star Wars universe heads back to familiar territory with Din Djarin and Grogu, and the new series leans into everything that made their partnership irresistible: stoic warrior energy, found‑family warmth and a galaxy full of danger, politics and creatures with questionable intentions.
Expect a broader canvas this time — bigger stakes, deeper lore and a sense that the pair are being drawn into events far beyond bounty hunting. It’s still recognisably The Mandalorian, but with the scale and emotional weight turned up. A welcome return for two of modern Star Wars’ most beloved characters.
Radio
Sunday 30 August
7.15pm, BBC Radio 4 — Bouncing Off the Walls: A Prison Soundscape
A striking piece of auditory documentary-making, this soundscape builds its world not through interviews or narration but through the textures of prison life itself. The clatter of doors, the echo of corridors, the hum of communal spaces — all of it arranged to give listeners a sense of the rhythms and pressures of an environment defined by confinement.
It’s an atmospheric listen, one that asks you to sit inside the sonic architecture of incarceration and consider what it reveals. Without commentary, the programme becomes a kind of immersive portrait: unsettling in places, unexpectedly human in others, and quietly powerful in the way it lets sound do the storytelling.
Monday 31 August
6pm, Boom Rock — The Stiff Records Story
A lively, affectionate dive into one of Britain’s most gloriously unruly independent labels. Stiff Records was never just a roster — it was an attitude, a gleefully anarchic challenge to the music industry’s self-importance. The programme traces the label’s rise through its defining artists, from Ian Dury’s swagger to Elvis Costello’s sharp intelligence and Madness’s irresistible energy.
What emerges is a portrait of a label that prized personality, risk and sheer cheek. The documentary captures the era’s DIY spirit and the sense that Stiff’s artists were rewriting the rules as they went. A treat for anyone who loves the scruffier, more inventive corners of British music history. Repeated Thursday at 9pm.
Tuesday 1 September
8.05am, 3.05pm and 10.05pm, BBC World Service — People Fixing the World
This edition tackles sepsis — a condition where minutes matter and early diagnosis can be the difference between life and death. The programme looks at innovators trying to speed up detection, from rapid-testing technologies to new approaches in frontline healthcare that aim to catch symptoms before they escalate.
It’s a clear-eyed, hopeful piece of reporting, focused on practical solutions rather than alarm. By spotlighting people working to close the gap between onset and treatment, the episode shows how small changes in process and technology could save thousands of lives worldwide.
Wednesday 2 September
10am, 4pm and midnight, BBC Radio 4 Extra — Mercury
Three chances across the day to catch this imaginative audio drama, which blends mystery, science and a touch of the uncanny. Mercury unfolds with a slow, deliberate pull, drawing listeners into a story where the boundaries between explanation and intuition blur.
It’s the kind of drama that rewards close listening: layered sound design, thoughtful pacing and a narrative that reveals itself piece by piece. Atmospheric, intriguing and well worth dipping into at whichever time suits.
Friday 4 September
8.30pm, BBC World Service — CrowdScience
This week’s episode takes a gleeful dive into the psychology of roller coasters — why some people crave the stomach-dropping, high-speed chaos of a ride while others would rather stay firmly on the ground. The programme explores the science of thrill-seeking, from brain chemistry to personality traits, and how our bodies interpret fear when we know we’re safe.
It’s an entertaining blend of neuroscience and amusement-park nostalgia, with plenty of insight into what drives human appetite for controlled danger. A fun, thoughtful listen that might even explain why you love — or loathe — being hurled around at improbable speeds.
That’s it for this week. Plenty of crime, music, history and heavyweight cinema, with enough lighter material scattered around to stop the whole thing becoming oppressive. If I were choosing just three, I’d make time for The Godfather Part II, Kind Hearts and Coronets and the James Bond Prom — three very different demonstrations of how much pleasure there is to be had when style and substance turn up together.
Selections and reviews by Pat Harrington
