TV drama
Adam Sweeting
Tales of the legal profession have given us countless memorable TV moments (Silk, Damages, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Good Wife, Better Call Saul, need I go on?), but there’s always room for one more on top. War, created by George Kay backed up by a cluster of screenwriters, is a formidable addition to the list, as it tells the story of a bitter and tangled divorce battle between technology tycoon Morgan Henderson (Dominic West), creator of the Zephyr social media platform, and his movie star wife Carla Duval (Sienna Miller).As well as being a portrait of an imploding marriage, War is also a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This much-acclaimed show about Israeli anti-terrorist operations in the Palestinian territories has always been raw and gritty, but its fifth season takes it to an unprecedented level. The series, once again written by Lior Raz and Abi Issacharoff, was conceived in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, and an aura of anguish and despair hovers over the narrative. Episodes seven and eight, which are dedicated to depicting the October 7 events, are preceded by trigger warnings (if you’d prefer not to watch them, you’ll still be able to follow the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Guy Ritchie’s tall tales of toffs and robbers continue apace in this second series of The Gentlemen, as we return to the country estate of Edward Horniman, 13th Duke of Halstead. Theo James strides once again to the crease as the Duke, with Kaya Scodelario returning as Susie Glass, Eddie’s business partner and daughter of thuggish crime supremo Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone).Eddie is now expanding his subterranean weed-growing business further afield, via an Italian connection, Cico Maldini (Michele Morrone). Unfortunately Cico is an uncouth oaf incapable of civilised conversation or savouring Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Bomb disposal clearly isn’t a job for the faint-hearted, but Vicky McLure’s Lana Washington, who heads the specialist Metropolitan Police bomb squad known as SO15, continues to stride boldly into the fray, even if the emotional toll is cranking itself up inexorably. This fourth season of Trigger Point kicks off as Washington and her team track the progress of a truck driving into the City of London, which they have reason to believe is crammed with explosives. Its target is the Bank of England.Their task isn’t made easier by the fact that the truck is being monitored by a drone overhead, but Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In its first two series, Vigil investigated a mysterious death on a nuclear submarine and took a deep dive into drone warfare. This time around, writer/creator Tom Edge has moved the action to Svalbard in the Arctic (78 degrees north, to be exact,) where politics, greed and natural resources collide.Though Svalbard is Norwegian territory, its geographically strategic location means that various nations (not least China and Russia) are casting a covetous eye on it. The Russians even have their own enclave here (not sure how that works, frankly) called Baltegrad, which is run by a grumpy Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ah, Benidorm… sea, sun, sand, sex, sangria and chips. In 5’s new six-part comedy drama, masterminded by Ian Jarvis, the popular Costa Blanca resort becomes the setting for a series of murders which are amusing brain-teasers in themselves, while the show also has a lot of fun with the various species of visitors who EasyJet themselves to Spain’s Mediterranean coast to pick up a nice dose of sunburn. Given the prevailing UK weather conditions they could probably have made this in Margate, despite its lack of Miami-style skyscrapers, but that needn’t detain us now.At the centre of the action is Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Based on the novel by Marissa Stapley and telly-ised by screenwriter/creator Jonathan Tropper, Lucky is a rip-roaring tale of dysfunctional criminal families, enlivened by a batch of splendid performances from an excellent cast. Front and centre is Lucky herself (full name Luciana Armstrong), a compulsive thief and skilled con artist, played quite brilliantly by Anya Taylor-Joy.As it happens, Lucky is the daughter of another inveterate criminal, her father John Armstrong, and as we see in various flashbacks, she was (as Joni Mitchell put it) raised on robbery. As she admits, her situation is Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
One sometimes finds oneself wondering whether Harlan Coben is an author or a set of AI procedures designed to manufacture plots of ludicrous twistiness. Whatever he or it is, it’s managed to infatuate Netflix and Prime Video, who can’t stop turning this stuff into TV wallpaper (The Stranger, The Woods, Shelter etc). Richard Armitage quite often stars in them.Armitage isn’t in I Will Find You, but most of the usual Coben-esque traits are in evidence. There are frequent enigmatic flashbacks to past events which have paved the way for the present-day action, there are missing persons and altered Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You might think the spy thriller is a genre which has been worn out and abused to death, but this second series of The Agency is here to tell you otherwise. Once again penned by the prolific Butterworth brothers Jez and John-Henry, it brings us back to the CIA London station helmed by the laconic Bosko (Richard Gere) and his morose and curmudgeonly deputy Henry Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright).The star turn among their agents is the man codenamed Martian (Michael Fassbender), who remains haunted by his love affair with Sudanese anthropologist Sami Zahir (Jodie Turner-Swift, pictured below with Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Aptly scheduled for our Great British Heatwave, writer Catherine Shepherd’s eight-part drama whisks us away to a remote Greek island, where a band of friends (four of them having been at university together) have rented an aesthetically pleasing but somewhat decrepit house for the titular fortnight. Their Greek housekeeper patiently explains that the plumbing is dangerously ancient and would they please put used toilet paper in the bin rather than trying to flush it, which prompts a few aghast sideways glances. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t drink the water.History tells us that fictional Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Screenwriter Neil Forsyth earned kudos a-plenty with his two BBC One series of The Gold, a dramatisation of the 1983 Brink’s-Mat bullion robbery and its aftermath. Now he’s stepped aboard the good ship Netflix for this story of heroin-pushing gangs in London and Liverpool, set in the dying days of the Thatcher government at the turn of the Nineties.Again the story is rooted in fact, and explores how a group of fairly lowly customs officers were recruited to infiltrate and destroy a multi-million pound heroin racket that was wreaking havoc with both poor kids in Northern housing estates as Read more ...
Pamela Jahn
Lindsay Duncan might be British acting royalty, yet her gangster matriarch Ollie in Charlotte Regan’s BBC drama series Mint is not what you'd call stately or regal. Flamboyant, fiery, and unapologetic in her seventies, Ollie certainly isn't a typical granny - as her granddaughter Shannon (Emma Laird) has come to realise a long time ago. Mint centres on Shannon, whose dad Dylan (Sam Riley) - Ollie's son - is the new Godfather of Grangemouth . He now runs the dark and dirty family business that his ruthless father Andy (Clive Russell) built. As a romance blossoms between Shannon and Arran Read more ...