thu 30/11/2023

tv

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.

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Special Ops: Lioness, Paramount+ review - high-octane female cast conducts war on terror

Adam Sweeting

If you want to get a hit show on American TV, you could do a lot worse than recruit Taylor Sheridan to create it for you. Special Ops: Lioness, a bruising trip into the innards of a CIA counter-terror unit, follows a string of successes which have made Sheridan a towering presence in film and TV.

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Rosie Jones: Am I a R*tard? Channel 4 review - disappointing documentary

Saskia Baron

Channel 4 has been getting a lot of flack on Twitter from people involved in disability for the title of this documentary.

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World on Fire, Series 2, BBC One - return of Peter Bowker's panoramic view of World War Two

Adam Sweeting

Writer Peter Bowker apparently had plans to make six series of World on Fire, but the arrival of Covid after 2019’s first series threw a spanner in the works. Anyway, here’s the second one at last, and it’s a little strange to find that this encyclopedic saga of the Second World War has only advanced as far as the autumn of 1940.

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Disturbing Disappearances, More4 review - headstrong 'tec tackles Pied Piper mystery

Adam Sweeting

This five-part policier is the finale of the current Walter Presents French season, and takes us to the town of Montclair on France’s eastern border. The opening self-contained episode, occupying a chunky two-hour slot, took for its theme the legend of the Pied Piper. In this, you may recall, the children of Hamelin were lured away by the titular itinerant musician and drowned.

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Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Season 4, Prime Video review - final outing for John Krasinski's CIA hero

Adam Sweeting

This fourth season of Prime’s reworking of Tom Clancy’s fictional CIA man is supposedly the last (to avoid any confusion they’ve dubbed it The Final Mission). It maintains its tradition of deluxe production values, globe-hopping locations and the kind of labyrinthine plotting liable to prompt frequent recourse to the rewind button.

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Hijack, Apple TV+ review - trapped at 40,000 feet with a bunch of armed thugs

Adam Sweeting

Probably because it’s a secret fear shared by many a flyer, aircraft hijacking has become its own screen mini-genre. We’ve already had not only Hijack but also Hijacked, not to mention the Wesley Snipes vehicle Passenger 57, Jodie Foster in Flightplan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 7500.

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Spiral of Lies, Channel 4 review - bodies, fibs and bad karma in Biarritz

Adam Sweeting

Not to be confused with the matchless French policier Spiral, Spiral of Lies (or J’ai Menti in its native tongue) is a twisty tale of murder, guilt and deceit, playing out over a 16-year time period. Camille Lou pulls off the quite impressive feat of playing the main protagonist, Audrey Barreyre, as both a reckless 19-year-old and a lawyer in her mid-thirties, who finds herself forced to confront the fallout from the mistakes made by her younger self.

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Turn of the Tide, Netflix review - cocaine madness comes to the Azores

Adam Sweeting

When we consider the storied history of Portuguese television, we naturally think of… er… well, perhaps we'll get back to you on that. But in the meantime there’s Turn of the Tide (or Rabo de Peixe to give it its original title), Augusto Fraga’s surprising and captivating story of a tiny community in the Azores which suddenly finds itself awash with cocaine.

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The Change, Channel 4 review - beguiling feminist comedy with a stellar cast

Helen Hawkins

Young women who were riveted by Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones columns in the 1990s are now probably of the age where the menopause is, or has recently been, a bigger concern than landing your own Mr Darcy. Which is why Bridget Christie’s The Change (Channel 4) has arrived with ideal timing.

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