TV drama
Jekyll & Hyde, ITV / From Darkness, Series Finale, BBC OneMonday, 26 October 2015
It's the age of the prequel, sequel and origin story, and the ingenious Charlie Higson has decided that now is the time to give Robert Louis Stevenson's divided-self myth a superhero-style makeover. Action-packed and a little bit shocking, this... Read more... |
Homeland, Series 5, Channel 4Monday, 12 October 2015
Stunningly reinvented in series four, Homeland sustained the momentum with this tense and menacing fifth season opener. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has now quit the CIA for a new job in Berlin, where she's working as head of security for... Read more... |
Doctor Foster, Series Finale, BBC OneThursday, 08 October 2015
Revenge dramas are such a guilty pleasure - there's a vicarious thrill in watching a baddie being taken down in a way that we might wish to, but never would, in real life. And boy, but did Gemma take down cheating husband Simon in the closing... Read more... |
From Darkness, BBC OneMonday, 05 October 2015
This is the first of two new TV series this week to feature a female police officer investigating the discovery of long-buried skeletons (the other one is Thursday's Unforgotten on ITV). The two shows are different in tone, but still reminiscent of... Read more... |
Midwinter of the Spirit, ITVThursday, 24 September 2015
TV series about the clergy are usually farcical, self-deprecating or just plain wet, so it's a pleasant surprise to find one that's prepared to slug it out with issues of good and evil. Compared to Rev, a wistful tragi-comedy about managing the... Read more... |
This Is England '90, Channel 4Monday, 14 September 2015
It’s been worth the wait. There’s something about the affection Shane Meadows feels for his characters; the street action that doesn’t often (in this opener especially, though that may well change) tip into overt drama; the family elements that... Read more... |
Doctor Foster, BBC OneThursday, 10 September 2015
Doctor Foster takes its name from a nursery rhyme, but don’t be lulled. From the moment its brunette protagonist finds a long blonde hair on her husband’s scarf, we are hurtling headlong into a revenge drama. Doctor Foster – known to her pals as... Read more... |
Ripper Street, Series 3, BBC OneSaturday, 01 August 2015
Axed by the BBC at the end of 2013 after its second series, ostensibly because of poor viewing figures, Ripper Street found a new home on Amazon Prime, where the third series began streaming in November last year. With a fourth and fifth series... Read more... |
Life in Squares, BBC TwoTuesday, 28 July 2015
London, 1905. For the Stephen siblings, setting up an independent household in Bloomsbury freed them – especially the sisters, Vanessa and Virginia – from Victorian familial conventions. It resulted in a heady mix of creative endeavour and endless... Read more... |
The Outcast, BBC One / Marvel's Agent Carter, FoxMonday, 13 July 2015
Adapted in two parts by Sadie Jones from her own 2008 novel, The Outcast (**) is a morbid tale of emotional sterility and many kinds of self-harm. Leaving his troubled childhood for an even worse young-adulthood, our "hero", Lewis Aldridge,... Read more... |
Black Work, ITVMonday, 22 June 2015
Drama is all about secrets revealed, discoveries unfurled. Black Work was straight into that territory from the first scene. A man and a woman sat in a car, taking the solace from each other that they couldn’t find at home. As ever in such a... Read more... |
Strike Back: Legacy, Sky1Thursday, 04 June 2015
The fifth, and supposedly final, series depicting the adventures of the covert-action tough guys of Section 20 won't surprise anyone, but it won't disappoint its devotees either. Fast, brutal and violent, Strike Back is a slick mix of movie-like... Read more... |
