sat 21/06/2025

tv

The Continental, Prime Video - welcome to the expanding John Wick universe

Adam Sweeting

Now that earnings from the John Wick movie franchise have topped a billion dollars, it’s no surprise that there should be moves afoot to cash in by developing a “John Wick Universe”.

Read more...

Wilderness, Prime Video review - twisty thriller that leaves a nasty aftertaste

Helen Hawkins

Jenna Coleman has had a mostly upbeat acting CV to date, notably playing Clara in Doctor Who and the young Queen in ITV’s Victoria. The mood darkened with her excellent turn as the French-Canadian girlfriend of the mass murderer in The Serpent; now it turns to pitch with Wilderness.

Read more...

Top Boy, Season 5, Netflix review - grime and punishment

Adam Sweeting

And so Ronan Bennett’s Hackney gangster odyssey reaches its conclusion, having made the leap from its Channel 4 origins back in 2011 to become, over its last three series, one of Netflix’s top-rating and most acclaimed shows. And it has managed to do it without diluting or compromising its London roots, despite detours to Jamaica, Spain, Morocco and even Ramsgate.

Read more...

Who Is Erin Carter?, Netflix review - secrets and ultra-violence under the Catalan sun

Adam Sweeting

One thing we know for sure about Erin Carter is that she’s played by Swedish-Kurdish actor Evin Ahmad, and it’s clear right from the start that she’s a woman with a complicated past which she’s trying to run away from. But you’ll have to get to episode four before the mysteries start to unwind themselves.

Read more...

The Woman in the Wall, BBC One review - deliciously dark murder mystery with a tragic hinterland

Helen Hawkins

Ruth Wilson possibly hasn’t had as much to get her teeth into on-screen since she vamped it up in Luther. Her performance as Lorna Brady in The Woman in the Wall is an object lesson in the way a performer in demand for her engaging looks and edgy sexiness can smartly step off that particular conveyor belt and go off in a totally new direction. 

Read more...

The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies, BBC One - deliciously bingeable drama from the Skinner sisters

Adam Sweeting

They could have titled this series Gaslighting. It’s a sly and twisty thriller about a conman whose deadliest weapon is his gift for making his victims feel as if everything that happened to them was their own fault, and they brought it on themselves.

Read more...

Harlan Coben's Shelter, Prime Video review - what the hell is going on in Kasselton, New Jersey?

Adam Sweeting

Netflix scooped up the rights to an armful of Harlan Coben’s standalone novels for a colossal sum, and now Amazon Prime has nipped in and signed up Coben’s series of Mickey Bolitar books, which fall under the “young adult” heading. Shelter is the first one off the blocks.

Read more...

Only Murders in the Building, Disney+ review - this comedy crime drama is a class act

Adam Sweeting

Despite its cursory nods to new technology, there’s something deliciously old-fashioned about Only Murders in the Building. Now into its third series, it tells the stories of a trio of affluent Manhattanites who make true-life podcasts about the mysterious deaths that occur in their palatial Upper West Side apartment building.

Read more...

Enemy of the People, Channel 4 review - murder and corruption in the age of digital media

Adam Sweeting

Presented to you by Channel 4’s industrious Walter, Enemy of the People is a punchy Finnish drama which makes some smart and timely observations about life in the age of digital money and poisonous social media.

Read more...

Wolf, BBC One review - a load of old...

Adam Sweeting

Adapted by Megan Gallagher from one of Mo Hayder’s Jack Caffery novels (the seventh one, apparently), Wolf might be described as Welsh Gothic, spiced up with a splash of gratuitous sadism. Episode two, for instance, is titled merely “Torture”, which might apply to some of the acting as much as the dramatic content.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
RNCM International Diploma Artists, BBC Philharmonic, MediaC...

Two concerts in the BBC Philharmonic’s series in their own studio form the climax of studies at the Royal Northern College of Music for a small...

Prost, BBC 4 review - life and times of the driver they call...

With Brad Pitt’s much-trumpeted F1 movie about to screech noisily into the multiplexes, it’s not a bad time to be reminded of the career of one of...

Album: Yungblud - Idols

Yungblud has declared his fourth album, Idols, to be a “a project with no limitations”. This is quite a claim.

So, what musical...

Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Suzuki, St Marti...

In the Saxony of 1725 – still in the grip of Europe’s “Little Ice Age” – Bach and his musicians would seldom have had to deal with the sort of...

Patrick Wolf, Rough Trade East review - the Kent-based bard...

After the evening’s second song “The Last of England,” Patrick Wolf cautions “I’ve got nothing left to say.” During the shows leading up to this...

4.48 Psychosis, Royal Court review - powerful but déjà vu

Sarah Kane is the most celebrated new writer of the 1990s. Her work is provocative and innovative. So it seems oddly unimaginative to mark the...

The Buccaneers, Apple TV+, Season 2 review - American advent...

Edith Wharton hadn’t finished her novel, The Buccaneers, when she died in 1937, but it was completed in 1993 by Marion Mainwaring. The...

Red Path review - the dead know everything

Here’s a film you might not feel like seeing. After all, Red Path tells of a 14-year-old in Tunisia who is forced to carry home the...