tue 01/07/2025

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WW1: The Last Tommies, BBC Four review - Great War stories

Jasper Rees

“Why should I go out and kill somebody I never knew? There was no reason at all in it in my way of thinking.” Britain’s very last Tommy was Harry Patch, born in 1898, conscripted in 1916 and still alive on his 111th birthday in 2009.

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix review - girl power goes supernatural

Adam Sweeting

Not to be confused with Nineties supernatural sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Netflix’s new incarnation of the high-schooler with infernal powers is a ghoulish thrill-ride which boldly surfs the dark side, with a pronounced feminist and...

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Imagine... Becoming Cary Grant, BBC One review - contemplative portrait of a star

Saskia Baron

Mark Kidel has made a beautiful, ethereal film projecting his version of Cary Grant and as such it’s destined to be picked over by the actor’s legions of fans, each of whom will have a different version. But what would the man himself have thought if he’d lived to see Becoming Cary Grant?

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Strangers, Series Finale, ITV review - Eastern promise goes unfulfilled

Adam Sweeting

After seeming to spend an interminable amount of time wandering around in a daze and blundering up blind alleys, Strangers finally gathered its wits and cantered towards the finishing tape with a renewed sense of purpose in the final two episodes.

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The Little Drummer Girl, BBC One, review - latest Le Carré just passes audition

Jasper Rees

When after six novels John Le Carré turned away from the Cold War, he turned towards another simmering post-war conflict, between Israel and Islam. The Little Drummer Girl was published in 1983, and filmed a year later with Diane Keaton and Klaus Kinski.

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Berlin Station, More 4 review - spooks in Euroland

Adam Sweeting

It’s eight years since Richard Armitage’s character Lucas North died in Spooks, but now Armitage is back undercover as CIA agent Daniel Miller in Berlin Station. Mind you, it’s already been touch and go – Miller was shot in in Berlin’s Potzdamer Platz in a flash-forward opening sequence, but apparently not fatally.

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Imagine... Tracey Emin: Where Do You Draw the Line, BBC One review - entertaining but deferential

Markie Robson-Scott

It’s been a whirlwind year for Tracey Emin, CBE, RA. Her pink neon sign, “I want my time with you”, greets passengers at St Pancras station, she’s installed bronze birds all over Sydney city centre, she’s making a derelict print works in Margate into a living-space/studio that’s going to be like Rodin’s in Paris but “slightly bigger”, and she’s got married.

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There She Goes, BBC Four review - mining disability for family comedy?

Saskia Baron

What do you do after playing Doctor Who, the dream dad of the nation, quirky and compassionate, the adult who every child knows will be fun?  Does it seem like a good idea to play the beleaguered father of a child with special needs? It must do, because David Tennant has now followed Christopher Ecclestone, who played the grandfather of an autistic boy in The A Word.

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Informer, BBC One review - keeping tabs on terror

Adam Sweeting

Thanks heavens not all police officers spend their time trying to find “hate crime” on Twitter, or not going to the assistance of colleagues in peril. Take Gabe Waters, for instance, the central character in BBC One’s new undercover-policier.

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Barneys, Books and Bust Ups, BBC Four review - the Booker Prize at 50

Marina Vaizey

You had to keep your eyes skinned. Was that Iris Murdoch or AS Byatt, Kingsley Amis or John Banville, Margaret Atwood or Val McDermid – maybe, even, Joanna Lumley? Tables as far as the eye can see, dressed with white tablecloths and crowded with wine glasses.

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