wed 20/08/2025

tv

The Virtues, Channel 4 review - close and personal with stunning Stephen Graham

Tom Baily

The Virtues (Channel 4) sees director Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, This Is England) reunite with actor Stephen Graham in what is certainly their most raw and emotionally bruising project to date.

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Years and Years, BBC One review - ambitious but amorphous

Adam Sweeting

As the double-edged Chinese proverb has it, “may you live in interesting times.” Screenwriter Russell T Davies evidently thanks that’s exactly where we’re at, and his new six-part drama Years and Years (BBC One) is a bold, sprawling but – as far as episode one is concerned at least – amorphous attempt to assess the...

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Bear's Mission with David Walliams, ITV review - celebs go wild in the country

Adam Sweeting

In the past, Bear Grylls has taken President Obama up an Alaskan glacier and trekked through the Swiss Alps with Roger Federer.

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Deep State, Series 2, Fox review - covert conspiracies in Africa

Adam Sweeting

Last year’s first season of Deep State featured cloak and dagger exploitations of chaos in the Middle East by the capitalist West and its intelligence services.

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Chernobyl, Sky Atlantic review - a glimpse of Armageddon

Adam Sweeting

“I take it the safety test was a failure,” remarked Viktor Bryukhanov, director of Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power station. You could say that again.

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Trust Me, Series 2 Finale, BBC One review - dodgy doctors and unreliable nurses

Adam Sweeting

Writer Dan Sefton’s four-part hospital drama reached a modestly satisfying conclusion as the phantom killer stalking the wards was finally unmasked, following the usual twists and misdirections obligatory in thrillerland.

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Line of Duty, BBC One, series 5 finale review - big highs and Biggeloe

Jasper Rees

The porn was a bit disappointing, was it not? Dear old Ted, no longer romantically active, admitted to being a user. The Superintendent Hastings fanclub sighed for sorrow to witness him toss away his status as an essentially decent heartthrob for the Saga generation. Sorry for your loss, ladies. It was also disappointing because the high-risk act of wiping his laptop turned out to have such a bathetic explanation.

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My Extreme Drugs Diary, Channel 5 review - the tedium of taking heroin

Markie Robson-Scott

Jacob has just managed to shoot up. No easy matter because his veins are, he says, non-usable, and are like those of an 80-year-old man. He’s in his twenties and has been on heroin for six years. Unusually, he works full time, has a car and a flat – blood-spattered ones. When the heroin kicks in he doesn’t feel stoned but as if he could “work on some graphic design or art work”.

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The Widow, Series Finale, ITV review - Congolese drama parts company with reality

Adam Sweeting

Are brothers Harry and Jack Williams mounting a takeover bid for British TV? They’ve written (among other dramas) The Missing, Liar and Baptiste, and they produced Fleabag. However, judging by their co-writing efforts on The Widow (ITV) they’re spreading themselves thin.

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Bake Off: The Professionals, Channel 4 review - farcical but fun

Adam Sweeting

TV cooking shows are mostly a pain in the butt. Masterchef, featuring the thuggish Gregg Wallace and John Torode along with India Fisher’s excruciatingly arch voiceover, is enough to provoke a massed hunger strike. The BBC’s Great British Bake Off may have featured national treasure Mary Berry, but her Miss Marple-ish charm was undermined by the ostentatiously pointless Mel and Sue.

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