BBC One
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Re-casting a beloved character always carries a measure of risk. Solo: A Star Wars Story relied on the willingness of fans to buy in to Alden Ehrenreich as a younger incarnation of Harrison Ford: the film bombed (you know, in Star Wars terms, since it barely made $400 million). New Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall had an even bigger risk on his hands, casting the first northerner in the titular role since Christopher Eccleston in 2005 – but Jodie Whittaker did not disappoint.In fact, by her first “what?” – delivered to half the supporting cast after she dropped through the roof of an Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Following the runaway success of Bodyguard, Jed Mercurio is no doubt popping more champagne and saying “follow that”. Stepping up to BBC One’s Sunday 9pm slot is The Cry, which transports us from suicide bombs and political intrigue and instead immerses us in the emotional plight of new mother Joanna (Jenna Coleman) and her partner Alistair (Ewen Leslie).Adapted from Helen FitzGerald’s novel, The Cry is going to be a dark and tortured journey into failed relationships, parenthood in crisis, accusations and loss, and this first of four parts set the ball rolling ominously. Screenwriter Read more ...
Jasper Rees
And breathe. Bodyguard – not, as even some careless BBC broadcasters keep calling it, "The Bodyguard" – careered to a conclusion as if hurtling around a booby-trapped assault course. It turned out that, contrary to a popular theory about Jed Mercurio's BBC One thriller, the Home Secretary Julia Montague was not secretly alive and well and hiding round the corner in a crazy Mercurioso twist. Apparently she really was dead and buried, and for much of the pulsating finale the hunter became the hunted as her lover and protector PS David Budd (Richard Madden) was identified as her murderer. And Read more ...
Owen Richards
What signals the end of a relationship? The loss of attraction? Infidelity? Or is it, as Wanderlust explores, something more innocuous? The opening episode of BBC One's latest show packed in enough domestic drama to sustain most series, but found its pressure points in unexpected places. This is not a story of betrayal, but an honest conversation on what happens when lust leaves but love remains.When we met Joy and Alan (Toni Collette and Steven Mackintosh, main picture), they're going through the motions. Foreplay consists of a disinterested strip and a mild reassurance of “ready?” This isn’ Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It was always a question of when. As in when would the hoity-toity Home Secretary and her poker-faced bodyguard move into the horizontal? “I’m not the queen, you know,” she said, by way of a hot come-on. “You can touch me.” As a mode of discourse, this marked quite a step-up from the first episode of Jed Mercurio's new drama. Then the Rt Hon Julia Montague didn’t even want his vote. Now she was after her bodyguard’s body. “I Will Always Love You”, anyone?The great thrill of Bodyguard (BBC One) is one’s absolute uncertainty about which way it’s going to twist next. By the end of episode two, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you were looking for the antidote to Love Island, this might be just the job. Instead of airbrushed 20-something Instagram fanatics flaunting their “gym-honed” physiques in the Mediterranean sun, in Age Before Beauty (BBC One) writer Debbie Horsfield (Poldark, Cutting It) brings us mid-life angst and middle-aged spread amid the lipgloss and face-peels of the tacky Mirrorbel beauty salon in Manchester.Largely, it’s a family affair. Bel (Polly Walker) used to run the salon, but gave it up to raise her kids with husband Wesley (James Murray). Now the offspring are starting courses at Leeds Read more ...
Owen Richards
How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama. Faced with the sudden disappearance of her seemingly lovely husband, she must piece together where he’s gone and what she’s been missing.Keeping Faith was broadcast in Welsh on S4C last November, and played on BBC Wales earlier this year, following a string of recent Welsh-made dramas. Like them, there’s your obligatory gorgeous scenery, but where Hinterland and Hidden went for Scandi-lite Read more ...
Jasper Rees
How many people were watching Picnic at Hanging Rock as it took its bow on BBC One? This opening episode happened to be preceded by a rival attraction on ITV. The premise of the story, set in Australia in 1900, is that almost no one sees three girls in their long white summer dresses abscond from the eponymous school outing to explore a local attraction and vanish without trace, to be followed by their teacher. Thanks to an unlucky accident of scheduling, the audience may have vanished too.This is a six-part adaptation of the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, but the story is far better known for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I’ve never been in the Army, but I can’t imagine anybody involved with the making of Our Girl (BBC One) has either. This fourth series continues the drama’s traditional formula of carting Corporal Georgie Lane (Michelle Keegan) and her fellow-members of 2 Section off to some mysterious or exotic location (Kenya, Nepal and now Nigeria), and mixing up humanitarian work with a few military shenanigans while deluging the whole lot in a thick layer of soap.Writer Tony Grounds has sought to add a twist of emotional poignancy by reminding us of the fate of Georgie’s former lover, dashing SAS glamour Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Would it be happy ever after for John and Kayleigh? Would they or would they not drive off into the sunset? By the end they weren’t driving off anywhere. Thanks to an errant hedgehog, the finale of Peter Kay’s Car Share (BBC One) turned into Peter Kay’s Car Crash and blew the bloody doors off. So they went home holding hands on the bus.What a wonderful treat our last road trip with them was. For the nerdy #CarShare connoisseurs the street sign jokes came thick and fast. Old Trafford was handed over to Manchester City, there was an ad for My Big Fat Undateable Bake Off (“fancy a raspberry Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There was a time when Hugh Grant was viewed as a thespian one-trick pony, a floppy-haired fop dithering in a state of perpetual romantic confusion. But things have changed. He was excellent in Florence Foster Jenkins, hilariously self-parodic in Paddington 2, and he’s brilliant in A Very English Scandal (BBC One) as smooth, treacherous Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe. At moments, he even manages to look uncannily like him.Thorpe himself would doubtless have dreamed of pulling off a similar feat of reinvention, but for all his success as a revitalising force in the Liberal Party, his goose was Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Much has been made of this adaptation of The Woman in White having an especial relevance for our times. Its concern with the power dynamics of gender relations was certainly hammered home right from the beginning, as Jessie Buckley uttered its loaded opening question, “How is it men crush women time and time again and go unpunished?”, effectively delivered to us, the audience, to boot. But despite such references being periodically dropped into the dialogue – and that opening sentence certainly didn’t come from the Wilkie Collins novel, either – as its five episodes developed, Fiona Seres’s Read more ...