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Election Night, BBC One/ITV/Channel 4/Sky News

Barney Harsent Friday, 08 May 2015

After the most TV-based election build-up ever seen with big debates, small debates and, for the two main party leaders at least, a traditional Paxo stuffing, the battle buses were parked up as the electorate settled down to watch the big night on the small screen.

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Shark, BBC One

Marina Vaizey Friday, 08 May 2015

It is perhaps a clever piece of ironic perversity to have scheduled the first part of a three-part documentary on sharks on polling day, but the subject here is the comings and goings inside the complex world of the predators of the sea. The series is an amazing feat on the part of the BBC Natural History Unit, in tandem with the Discovery Channel.

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No Offence, Channel 4

Barney Harsent Tuesday, 05 May 2015

There’s been much hullabaloo surrounding the new series from Paul Abbott – and with good reason. It’s a decade since we’ve seen any TV from the creator of State of Play and Clocking Off and, given the impact and lasting legacy of Shameless, anticipation has been as high as Frank Gallagher at the business end of a three-day bender.

The C Word, BBC One / Home Fires, ITV

Adam Sweeting Monday, 04 May 2015

Perhaps only Sheridan Smith could have played the role of Lisa Lynch in The C Word [***], not just because of the no-messing directness she brought to the role, but because Lynch nominated her for the job. Lynch had attained a particular kind of celebrity as author of the blog, Alright Tit, about how she was coping with a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Anzac Girls, More4

Adam Sweeting Saturday, 02 May 2015

For Australians and New Zealanders, the grim meat-grinder of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 was their equivalent of the Somme, albeit under brilliant Aegean skies. The Australian-made Anzac Girls is based on real-life diaries and letters from the era, and homes in on five nurses from Down Under who were sent to treat the casualties. Inevitably they found conditions far more shocking and horrific than they'd imagined.

The Game, BBC Two

Tom Birchenough Friday, 01 May 2015

Rum old business, espionage – at least in the way we Brits are still pursuing it. For all the reality that the existential threat has long moved locations, in its television incarnations we remain addicted to the Cold War, the attraction to those gloomy postwar years seemingly a fatal one. The BBC’s new spy drama The Game was back in prime le Carré territory and the early Seventies, with industrial unrest and power cuts further turning down the visual wattage.

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Peter Kay's Car Share, BBC One

Veronica Lee Thursday, 30 April 2015

Peter Kay's first sitcom in 10 years is always something to look forward to, and it achieves another first: the BBC made the six-parter available on iPlayer to watch in its entirety before showing it on a terrestrial channel, and it has broken all viewing records.

24 Hours in the Past, BBC One

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 29 April 2015

The past is a foreign country. Celebrities do things differently there. Programmes which put people in time machines and whizz them back to a less centrally heated era have been around for a while. Back in the day they’d pick on ordinary people and make them live as a skivs and drudges in some specifically benighted era before the invention of such new-fangled concepts as electricity or the flush mechanism or gender equality. But that was then.

Empire, E4

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 29 April 2015

What Nashville did for country music, Empire may very well be about to do for the lurid world of hip hop. If not more so. Created by Lee Daniels (director of Precious) and written by Danny Hunger Games Strong, it's about ailing music mogul Lucious Lyon and how he must decide which of his three sons to hand over his Empire Entertainment conglomerate to.

Tales From the Tour Bus: Rock 'n' Roll on the Road, BBC Four

Barney Harsent Saturday, 25 April 2015

This latest Friday night vehicle for archive footage and pop performances was the tour bus, as BBC4 invited us to hop into the back of the van for a quick spin through the "golden age" of touring rock bands (which the producers clearly felt ended with the Eighties).