sun 20/07/2025

tv

Endeavour, Series 6, ITV review - reassuringly accomplished return of the brainy copper

Adam Sweeting

The end of series five of Endeavour found PC George Fancy shot dead, Cowley police station closed and the old crew dispersed. With Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack (it’s 1969), the sixth series opened minus WPC Trewlove, but with Fred Thursday demoted and shunted off to Castle Gate police station.

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David Bowie: Finding Fame, BBC Two review - the most touching instalment of Francis Whately's trilogy

howard Male

Even the most ardent Bowie fan might dismissively sum up their idol's pre-fame years with just these three words: The Laughing Gnome.

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Safe Harbour, Series Finale, BBC Four review - too much message, not enough drama

Adam Sweeting

Picture this. You’re sailing in the Timor Sea with family and friends on your luxurious yacht, hoiking the occasional plump fish out of the ocean to provide a ready meal washed down with Aussie plonk, when you suddenly chance across a decrepit, broken-down fishing boat crammed with mostly Iraqi refugees. What do you do?

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Das Boot, Sky Atlantic review - menacing drama on land and sea

Adam Sweeting

Wolfgang Petersen’s film Das Boot is now nearly 40 years old, but in this new TV sequel time has moved forward a mere nine months from the original story, into the autumn of 1942.

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Don McCullin: Looking for England, BBC Four review - a hard look at home

Marina Vaizey

A picture is worth more than a thousand words, never more so than with the photographs of Don McCullin. The octogenarian photographer’s black-and-white imagery made the Sunday Times colour supplement the talk of international media in the 1970s.

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Les Misérables, BBC One, series finale review - more moving than revealing

Jasper Rees

It took the best part of six episodes, but we got there in the end: the reason David Oyelowo accepted the confusingly underwritten part of Inspector Javert in BBC One’s adaptation of Les Misérables was finally revealed.

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Camping, Sky Atlantic, review - Lena Dunham's tentative British export

Jasper Rees

When British sitcoms head west anything can happen. For every success – The Office had a happy second life with Steve Carell – there are half a dozen others that got lost in translation, including Coupling, Getting On, Gavin and Stacey, The It Crowd and The Vicar of Dibley.

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The Last Survivors, BBC Two review - living on

Marina Vaizey

When they were children the interviewees in this film – the last survivors – were taken away in incomprehensible circumstances, on their way to be murdered for who they were, in Germany and places further east.

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Imagine... James Graham, BBC One review - deft analysis of a working life

Rachel Halliburton

How does an unassuming 36-year-old with a terrifyingly sensible haircut and a mildly flamboyant taste in jumpers become the political playwright par excellence of his generation?

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Nolan: Australia's Maverick Artist, BBC Four review – a lust for life in all its aspects

Marina Vaizey

Reckless, unstoppable, one step ahead of everyone else, a hell of a lot of fun, utterly charming, street smart – descriptions of the artist Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) poured out from colleagues, rivals, curators, art historians and dealers, not to mention friends and family, in this persuasive film.

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