BBC One
Jasper Rees
It took the best part of six episodes, but we got there in the end: the reason David Oyelowo accepted the confusingly underwritten part of Inspector Javert in BBC One’s adaptation of Les Misérables was finally revealed. His pursuit of an ex-convict for the theft of a coin stretched across hours and years, and in the process became not so much a single-minded obsession as a kind of exoskeleton that held the character in place. The motive which guided him towards this destination was, alas and bafflingly, never explored.Before the big moment came, Javert spent some of the last two episodes Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
How does an unassuming 36-year-old with a terrifyingly sensible haircut and a mildly flamboyant taste in jumpers become the political playwright par excellence of his generation? That’s the question that Alan Yentob sought to dissect in this first episode of a new series of Imagine, subtitled "In the Room Where It Happens", which deftly anatomised James Graham’s off-the-Richter-scale success in repeatedly making the political both profoundly and compellingly personal.Graham most recently made watercooler conversation sizzle with his Brexit: The Uncivil War, broadcast on Channel 4 earlier this Read more ...
Saskia Baron
“Can you breathe?’ “Yeah.” “Shame, that”. Another ne’er-do-well is being banged to rights after a chase through container stacks in the dark. Luther is back, and he hasn’t upgraded his Volvo or changed his tweed coat – but we don’t really mind, do we? It’s a bit like Columbo, Miss Marple or Christmas dinner, the familiar ingredients are what we crave. Before the title sequence rolls, two distinct storylines have been set up and we’ll doubtless spend the four episodes working out how they intertwine (or not); but mostly, we’re waiting for Ruth Wilson to appear.There’s a perverted serial killer Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sarah Phelps’s annual reboot of a canonical murder mystery by Agatha Christie has rapidly established itself as a Christmas staple of TV drama. And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence (which was postponed to Easter) are now followed by The ABC Murders (BBC One), which feels like the biggest creative challenge Phelps has yet faced in her rebranding project. Previously she has skirted clear of Christie’s iconic detectives but could not dodge them indefinitely. Here she has taken on the task of stripping the fussy layers of gloss off the overpainted Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The author of the original Watership Down novel, Richard Adams, used to insist that it was “just a story about rabbits”, but its eco-friendly theme and warnings about the destruction of the natural environment were impossible to miss. In the 46 years since Adams wrote it, these concerns have become vastly more pressing, and his depiction of displaced rabbits wandering the earth in search of a new home could hardly be more topical. Thus, this new BBC/Netflix adaptation is aptly timed.The 1978 film version, voiced by the likes of John Hurt, Richard Briers and Ralph Richardson, was a giant hit Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There was a ruthless logic to the scheduling of The Long Song (BBC One). Broadcast over three consecutive nights, this fleet-footed adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel set during the era of abolition in 19th-century Jamaica swiftly gathered momentum and proceeded at pace towards (praise be) a charming denouement. But why Christmas?In fact the season to be jolly came up twice. In the opening episode there were the Christmas riots of 1831 in which rebellious slaves were subjected to a horrific pogrom. And then in the final episode, they greeted their freedom as the opportunity to down tools and Read more ...
Saskia Baron
As the priest said, "Understanding comes first, then forgiveness". Thus the rather enjoyable (if slightly overstretched) Mrs Wilson came to a not exactly happy, but certainly forgiving, ending. Ruth Wilson held the screen over three episodes of this period drama, playing her own real life grandmother Alison Wilson. But the story’s pivotal figure was her extraordinary grandfather, Alexander Wilson, who wove a tapestry of lies around his love life and probably his role as a British secret agent.Upon his death in 1963, Alison discovered that her husband had not just lied to her about divorcing Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You wouldn’t turn to Jimmy McGovern for a drawing-room comedy, but there’s no doubting his gift for seizing big issues and turning into them raw, bleeding chunks of drama. You’re either for him or against him, but if you’re against him he’d love to grab you by the throat and shake you into seeing it his way.In Care, McGovern (with co-writer Gillian Juckes, whose first-hand experiences inspired the story) took aim at the way the NHS and social services treat the elderly and the incapacitated. The set-up was simple but devastating. Mary (Alison Steadman) had been taking her two granddaughters Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Was The Little Drummer Girl commissioned by algorithm? Those who liked The Night Manager might reasonably have been supposed to enjoy another le Carré adaptation. The two dramas had DNA in common. Both steered away from the Cold War, and told of a rogue spy adopting a role to infiltrate a network and bring it down from within. There the overlap ended. Where The Night Manager exerted a vice-like grip, The Little Drummer Girl has caused much scratching of heads. Twitter's one-word review was “Huh?”So there was much audience depletion. By halfway through the series had haemorrhaged more than 40 Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When after six novels John Le Carré turned away from the Cold War, he turned towards another simmering post-war conflict, between Israel and Islam. The Little Drummer Girl was published in 1983, and filmed a year later with Diane Keaton and Klaus Kinski. As the novel becomes the latest Le Carré to be adapted for BBC One it remains just as current. With the Palestinian question no nearer to resolution, there is nothing opportunistic about this revival.Inevitably a Sunday-night six-parter from the same production company is going to be measured against The Night Manager, which gripped like a Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
It’s been a whirlwind year for Tracey Emin, CBE, RA. Her pink neon sign, “I want my time with you”, greets passengers at St Pancras station, she’s installed bronze birds all over Sydney city centre, she’s making a derelict print works in Margate into a living-space/studio that’s going to be like Rodin’s in Paris but “slightly bigger”, and she’s got married. To a large stone in her garden in the south of France. This was an empowering, really good, healthy thing, apparently. And she’s had Alan Yentob tailing her for 12 months for Imagine (BBC One).You might think that we already know Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Thanks heavens not all police officers spend their time trying to find “hate crime” on Twitter, or not going to the assistance of colleagues in peril. Take Gabe Waters, for instance, the central character in BBC One’s new undercover-policier.Gabe (played with grey-whiskered world-weariness by Paddy Considine) is an anti-terrorist officer, and spends long hours driving round greater London, squeezing his network of shadowy contacts and informers for tips and clues, and ceaselessly trying to recruit new ones. One of these turns out to be Raza Shar, who lives on a council estate with his Read more ...