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The Casual Vacancy, BBC One

Jasper Rees Monday, 16 February 2015

The broomsticks are back in the cupboard, wands are no longer at the ready, and no one is casting spells in cod Latin. JK Rowling’s first novel for adults has made its inevitable journey from page to screen. The first view of a picturesque Cotswolds village – a mannikin in erotic underwear provocatively on all fours in a shop window – says it succinctly: we’re not in Hogwarts any more.

Comment

Indian Summers, Channel 4

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 15 February 2015

In the tradition of A Passage to India, The Jewel in the Crown and Staying On, Indian Summers is ambitious, a serious soap attempting to show the dying days of the Raj through a host of interwoven personal and political attachments. Passions run high in the foothills of the Himalayas, cool in the Indian summer, but X-rated for human relationships.

Comment

Asylum, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Tuesday, 10 February 2015

The BBC is keen to point out to anyone who'll listen that this new political satire is not, repeat not, about Julian Assange. They'll allow that it was in part inspired by the WikiLeaks founder's situation, but any similarity between him and Dan Hern, a preening egotist who leaked official documents and sought asylum in a South American embassy in central London, is purely coincidental.

Better Call Saul, Netflix

Adam Sweeting Monday, 09 February 2015

Finally the moment the Breaking Bad diaspora has been waiting for, with the arrival of Vince Gilligan's new show about the earlier career of New Mexico's least scrupulous lawyer, Saul Goodman. Mind you, the title is a little bit misleading, because Saul doesn't exist yet. In this incarnation, he's still just a hustling low-life called Jimmy McGill, a man who never knowingly leaves any barrel unscraped.

Inside the Commons, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 03 February 2015

The Mother of Parliaments is mostly for males. The statues sprout whiskers and the cloakroom coat-hangers have ribbons for hanging swords. The place is run at a stately plod by bewigged, be-whiskered, be-white-tied gents. Members are, for the most part, owners of same.

The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, BBC Two

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 01 February 2015

Alice is always with us; the most quoted work of literature, after the Bible and Shakespeare. In fact, Desert Island Discs should probably add Alice to the mandatory Bible and Shakespeare as an automatic inclusion for the survival kit.

Kraftwerk: Pop Art, BBC Four

Barney Harsent Saturday, 31 January 2015

Some documentaries can feel like trying to view a desert landscape through a telescope. The need for tight focus on too large a subject can leave you constantly aware that there’s important stuff going on out of eyeshot. The stuff you can’t see becomes a constant irritant, like a pending tax return, or David Starkey. Kraftwerk: Pop Art, in significantly narrowing its focus, was more like studying a Petri dish under a microscope – and just as fascinating.

Comment

Fortitude, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Friday, 30 January 2015

If you can't beat 'em, steal brazenly from 'em. Instead of importing another Scandinavian drama series and slapping on some subtitles, or recycling Fargo or Breaking Bad (or for that matter Deadwood or Twin Peaks), Sky Atlantic has pushed the boat out and created its own slab of sub-zero Nordic mystery, packed with bankable international names. If this extended pilot episode was a reliable guide, it's going to be a tortuous ride on black ice.

Timeshift: Battle for the Himalayas, BBC Four

Jasper Rees Friday, 30 January 2015

When people talk about the Heroic Age of exploration, the heroes are generally agreed to be the explorers. But we’d know a great deal less about Edwardian chaps pluckily struggling through far-flung snowscapes if there weren’t images of them in situ. And the men who caught those images can be counted heroes too. Herbert Ponting pioneered cold-weather photographic techniques in Antarctica with Scott.

Touched by Auschwitz, BBC Two

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 28 January 2015

There’s been a pronounced sense of finality at this year’s 70^th anniversary commemoration of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz. No closure, of course, but an awareness that the ranks of survivors are diminishing, and that soon their first-person testimonials will disappear into a past.