sun 18/05/2025

TV

Saving Lives at Sea, BBC Two review - derring-do on the ocean wave with the RNLI

Learning support officer. Student. Chip shop owner. Mobile caterer. Gym owner. These were the day jobs of some of the volunteers featured in this week’s portfolio of tales on BBC Two from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who would all...

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The $50m Art Swindle, BBC Two review - ramblin' gamblin' man comes home to roost

“It’s nice to make money – lots of money,” said Michel Cohen, former high-flying New York art dealer turned debtor, jailbird and fugitive. He made oodles of the stuff and then lost it all, leaving a string of wealthy art collectors and galleries to...

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The Cameron Years, BBC One review - quite interesting but a bit boring

David Cameron has been a recluse since the fateful days of June 2016 when the referendum on EU membership didn’t go quite the way he’d hoped. He’s probably been living through a private purgatory. “I think I will think about this forever,” he...

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City on a Hill, Sky Atlantic review - power, corruption and larceny in 1990s Boston

Connoisseurs of gnarly Boston-based crime sagas like The Town, The Departed and Black Mass will quickly find themselves at home in this sleaze-ridden new show, made by Showtime and brought to us by Sky Atlantic. Created and largely written by Chuck...

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Defending the Guilty, BBC Two review - trials and tribulations of a trainee barrister

This new legal comedy is based on a well-received book by Alex McBride, but the transition from print to the BBC Two screen hasn’t been an unalloyed success. It stars Will Sharpe as trainee barrister Will Packham, who’s only been on the job for...

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Love in the Countryside, BBC Two review - reaping a harvest of marital bliss?

If you’re a farmer who works round the clock to feed sheep, milk cows and so forth, how on earth do you make time to find a partner and reap a harvest of marital bliss? Well you could ask Sara Cox if you can join in her dating game for “lonely rural...

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Temple, Sky 1 review - down in the tube station at midnight

At first, the opening episode of Sky 1’s enticing new drama Temple looked like it was going to be mostly concerned with a heist gone wrong. A gang of bandits were busily stealing an enormous mountain of money when they were inadvertently locked...

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Suicidal: In Our Own Words, Channel 5 review - why are so many men killing themselves?

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day, and Channel 5 marked the occasion with this sobering documentary. Focusing on male suicide – incredibly, now the UK’s biggest killer of men under 45 – it studied six patients at the Riverside Mental...

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Spotlight on The Troubles: A Secret History, BBC Four review - Ulster's bitter sectarian war revisited

“The Troubles” is a polite euphemism for the ferocious storm of sectarian violence and political chaos which convulsed Northern Ireland for 30 years, before being brought to a close by 1998’s Good Friday Agreement. Irish journalist Darragh MacIntyre...

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The Capture, BBC One review - gripping drama about the surveillance society

Ben Chanan's The Capture (BBC One), which he wrote and directed, is a bang-up-to-the-minute dystopian thriller about the increasingly surveilled society we live in. In last night’s opening episode of six, he set out his stall from the first frame,...

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High Society: Cannabis Café, Channel 4 review - pointless investigation into drug-taking

This was the first of a two-part investigation into... well, I don't know what. The voiceover of High Society: Cannabis Café said it was an experiment “to test the alleged benefits of weed” and the people featured all had “a personal motivation...

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Sink or Swim, Channel 4 review - the Channel awaits for these celebrities

Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history...

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