thu 10/07/2025

tv

Stammer School: Musharaf Finds His Voice, Channel 4

Tom Birchenough

What a difference four days can make. Stammer School: Musharaf Finds His Voice took us on an emotional journey from deep frustration and pain towards something like triumph and hope. "Triumph" may seem a big word, but it was hard to think of a better one after the film’s final scene where the stammerers whose progress we had been following came out and spoke with confidence in public.

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Star Paws: The Rise of Superstar Pets, Channel 4

Lisa-Marie Ferla

Mid-week at 9pm has always struck me as the perfect televisual sweet spot. It’s not so close to the weekend that you’re likely to want to go out, but enough of the week is done that it seems right to put your feet up and relax with a glass of wine and some exciting new drama or challenging documentary. Or, if you’re Channel 4, an hour on the 'professional pets' that the internet has helped launch to viral fame.

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Worst Place To Be A Pilot, Channel 4

Matthew Wright

Since Big Brother, Channel 4 has become expert at selecting naively self-promoting members of the public, and rubbing their unsuspecting apple cheeks into choice and unsavoury anatomical and psychological corners, for general public amusement. The title of this series suggests only a cosmetic variation on that theme, the question merely being whether it’s Islamists, Russian separatists or the weather that gets them first.

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Al Murray's Great British War Films, BBC Four

Andy Plaice

Fifty-seven minutes into this hour-long programme entitled "Al Murray’s Great British War Films", our host put panellist Dan Snow on the spot and asked him to name his favourite war film. “Does it have to be British?” Snow wondered. For a second it looked like Murray and his other two guests might stick him in solitary confinement for a week, yet Snow’s dizzy reaction was not only (unintentionally) funny but also gave away just how much he’d switched off by now.

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The Honourable Woman, Series Finale, BBC Two

Lisa-Marie Ferla

In the current political climate, it would have been grotesquely inappropriate to conclude even the most fictionalised account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with any kind of neat resolution. But even if Hugo Blick’s absorbing thriller had ever dealt in such things, the carefully orchestrated dual-location bloodbath at the climax of its penultimate episode was all the hint one needed that a happy ending was never on the cards.

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Doctor Who: Deep Breath, BBC One

Lisa-Marie Ferla

Imagine that you were a TV executive producer, and that you had managed to cast one of the country’s finest actors in the lead role. To what use would you put his considerable talent and gravitas? If your answer was not “engage him in a five-minute shouty monologue about how much he hates his eyebrows”, well, congratulations: you are not Doctor Who show runner Steven Moffat.

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The Kate Bush Story: Running Up that Hill, BBC Four

Matthew Wright

Kate Bush’s return to live performance next week, after 35 years’ absence, has been one of the defining features of this musical year. Her announcement, in March, of the Hammersmith gigs left even David Bowie’s gifted coup in the shade, creating a simmering summer of speculation. It’s surprising, then, that it’s taken the media so long to create the inevitable previews and retrospectives.

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Match of the Day at 50, BBC One

Matthew Wright

For most of us, reaching the age of 50 prompts a mature recognition of faded aspirations, balanced by some degree of respect, influence, and tender familial consolation. Most observers would say Match of the Day fits that pattern quite closely. Its more youthful, dynamic days are remembered with great respect, though it’s politely acknowledged to be wearier and wrinklier than before, its fiftieth birthday is an occasion for dignity and circumspection.

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Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of Three Cities, BBC Four

Fisun Güner

Eight seconds in and my toes were already curling. Perhaps it was the authority with which the voiceover delivered some juicy clunkers. “If you wanted to be an artist in 1908, Vienna is where you’d come to make your name,” it intoned. Wow, who’d bother with Paris, eh? Picasso, you idiot, messing about with Cubism in a Montmartre hovel when you could have been sticking gold leaf on your decorative canvases, à la Klimt. 

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Young Vets, BBC Two

Lisa-Marie Ferla

Britain, as Tamsin Greig’s soothing voiceover told us at the top of this hour, is a nation in love with its animals. Still, it’s unlikely that BBC Two is betting the house on this docu-soap, which will follow the lives of 10 students through their final year at the Royal Veterinary College and which is screening every night for the rest of this week.

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