BBC One
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Proof that the BBC’s love of gritty realism is not solely the province of Luther and similar modern-day urban crime dramas comes just minutes into the second series of Ripper Street, before the credits even roll. In the East End of London a police officer is thrown from a window, only missing a little boy playing recorder for the amusement of the street below when his leg is gruesomely impaled on a railing.The writers allowed their leading man a bit of social commentarySo far so Ripper Street of course, given the criticism that the first series of the Victorian crime thriller collected for Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“Everything has happened so quickly,” Katherine Glendenning mused as the new series of The Paradise shot off the block. She'd been en voyage for a year, losing a father and gaining a husband, but now Katherine was back. Moray’s melancholy sojourn on coffee and cognac in Paris – “thoroughly French in every way,” he found it, with less originality than we might have expected – had been suddenly cut short too, and he was hot-footing it back to the waiting arms of Denise. The dramatic rapiers were drawn. More immediately worrying was that business at the Paradise was down, badly down. Not Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In some ways Malachi Davies, one of the titular “truckers” in this new BBC comedy drama, brings to mind Frank Gallagher of Shameless. Admittedly Davies, played by Stephen Tompkinson, has a job - but it is a job that is as central to the identity of the character as Gallagher’s avoidance of one ever was. Some of the similarities are pretty superficial: the two characters share the love for a drink, a seeming inability to get a decent haircut and even an ex played by Maggie O’Neill. But what really links the two characters is the importance that each one places on family - at least, in the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Ancient Greece has been having a bit of a run lately what with Dr Michael Scott’s recent primers on Greek culture and society and the like. There are, however, certain parts of the television audience a Hellenistic scholar cannot reach, and they are to be found on a sofa looking for something to watch between Strictly and Casualty. In the event that such viewers choose not to gorge on The X Factor, they can now opt to spend time in Atlantis. Or should that be "Atlantis"?Atlantis has come along to occupy the fantasy slot previously occupied by Merlin. It opens in the present day as a buff Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Coming to it fresh, it’s hard to imagine Father Figure as the Radio 2 serial it apparently began life as. The first episode of the six-part series is driven by what some would call "visual gags" or "physical comedy", as if writer and star Jason Byrne was so excited by the new medium that he decided to throw everything he could at the camera to see what stuck.I say "some", because your mileage may vary on the comic potential of a small child, covered from head to toe in chocolate spread, running around the family home chanting “I’m a human poo!”. And I say "everything", because what gets Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A mouldered corpse, forgotten for years in a tottering Victorian house that teems with secrets? What Remains was only ever heading in one direction. Gothic from the off, episode by episode it got gothicker and gothicker. By the climax there was a messy Jenga of bodies, which was perhaps not unexpected, but did anyone guess quite how many characters would end up with blood on their hands? Not ex-detective Len Harper, who was no closer to solving the case when he took the law into his.Tony Basgallop’s script, abetted by director Coky Giedroyc’s eager eye for a creepy cranny, has pushed the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There are not generally a lot of laughs in dead bodies. So Raymond Chandler saw the funny side of murder, and Carl Hiassen dresses felonies in a bright Hawaiian shirt. But Glasgow, you’d think, would tend to keep corpses and comedy in separate boxes. Not here. Denise Mina’s fiction can keep a straight face when it needs to. Her trilogy of novels set in a hard-boiled Glasgow news room in the early 1980s takes a head-on look at the worst in humanity. But as adapted for BBC One, they’re also a hoot.The Field of Blood made a bit of a splash when it was adapted in 2011. Its sequel has now been Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After a two-year gap, Luther returns to BBC One for a third series at the beginning of July. Devotees of Idris Elba's broody, enigmatic, rule-trampling 'tec may feel disgruntled that they're only going to get four episodes, but at least the great man is on stonking form.Naturally your spoiler-free artsdesk can't give much of the game away, but this time the sometimes erratic Luther appears to have found its own natural tone, in which heightened realism and jump-out-of-your-seat grand guignol shocks sit comfortably with grimy east London locations. You get not one but a generous two killers to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As a prequel to the BBC's panorama of all things Tudor, Sunday night's new 10-part drama The White Queen (BBC One) whisks us back to the Wars of the Roses. Adapted from Philippa Gregory's novel, the series tells the story of how Edward IV, scion of the house of York, married the beautiful and widowed Elizabeth Woodville, from the rival house of Lancaster. In the opening episode, the pair first meet when Elizabeth (Rebecca Ferguson) petitions the king, as he rides past with his retinue, for the return of her lands. These were lost when her husband, Sir Richard Woodville, was killed in battle Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Unfortunate title aside, Psychobitches is a wonderfully original idea - what if famous women through the centuries were alive today and seeking treatment from a psychotherapist? In a quasi-sketch format using the talents of 10 credited writers, it's a neat construct that allows writers' imaginations free rein, unconstrained by time, place or actual facts, and gives a roll call of talented actresses (and the occasional bloke) a chance to do their very best impersonations.Last night's opener of a five-part series (expertly directed by The League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson) started with Rosa Read more ...
Veronica Lee
He's back - and he's even moodier than before. Jackson Brodie, the private dick for whom the word “brooding” was invented, hasn't been seen on BBC One since 2011, and now there are three 90-minute films to feast on, based on Kate Atkinson's novels and relocated to Edinburgh. Last night's was Started Early, Took My Dog.The story started in Munich, where Brodie (Jason Isaacs) was involved in a child snatch that he was doing solely for the money, as he had just spent two months visiting his daughter Marlee, who now lives with her mother in New Zealand, and that costs. It all went wrong as his Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Introductions, eh? When you make someone's acquaintance for the first time, you can never really tell if they’re going to grow on you. They worry about this a lot when knocking up drama serials. So meet Frankie, district nurse, the new resident at nine on Tuesday nights on BBC One. Living with a copper but married to the job. Gap between her teeth, which is always a good sign. Wigs out to music in the car. On the minus side, she treats the voice of Ken Bruce as some kind of life coach. Fancy spending the next few weeks if not years in her company? Because that's very much the plan.Lucy Read more ...