fri 15/08/2025

tv

Blue Planet II, BBC One review - just how fragile?

Katherine Waters

The eel is dying. Its body flits through a series of complicated knots which become increasingly grotesque torques. Immersed in a pool of brine — concentrated salt water five times denser than seawater — it is succumbing to toxic shock. As biomatter on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico decomposes, brine and methane are produced, and where these saline pockets collect, nothing grows.

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The Crown, Series 2, Netflix review - all our yesterdays, cunningly rewritten

Adam Sweeting

Beneath the creamy overlay of gowns, crystal chandeliers, palaces, uniformed flunkies and a sumptuous (albeit CGI-enhanced) Royal Yacht, a steely pulse of realpolitik fuels The Crown, returning to Netflix for its much-anticipated second series.

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Howards End finale, BBC One review - who isn't going to miss the Schlegel sisters?

Jasper Rees

How good was Howards End (BBC One)? Practically flawless.

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Imagine... Rachel Whiteread: Ghosts in the Room, BBC Two review - making memories solid

Sarah Kent

Eureka! A programme about a woman artist that doesn’t define her as a wife and mother first and an artist second.

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The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey, BBC Four review - awe-inspiring and life-affirming space odyssey

Owen Richards

Long before Barack Obama spoke about the audacity of hope, the Voyager mission left the Earth driven by something else: the audacity of curiosity. What do the outer planets look like? What are they comprised of? And what’s beyond that?

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Witnesses: A Frozen Death, BBC Four review - plummeting temperatures in the Pas de Calais

Adam Sweeting

A thankless task, perhaps, to find oneself following in the footsteps of the berserk Spanish melodrama I Know Who You Are (theartsdesk passim).

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Joe Orton Laid Bare, BBC Two review - charming look at theatre's irresistible upstart

Owen Richards

Laid Bare – it has a lurid implication which is all too suitable for Joe Orton’s work. During a time where the straight-laced British struggled to ease into sexual liberation, Orton stretched acceptability to its very limits. Salacious acts had been going on behind closed doors long before the Sixties, but everyone hid behind a modest front.

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Godless, Netflix review – a proper wild west ride

Owen Richards

There’s a storm heading to La Belle, the small forgotten town in the heart of the American West. As black clouds flash above the prairie, the injured body of Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) falls at the door of widowed rancher Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery). After adding one more wound to his collection, she takes in the stranger and helps him heal.  

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I Know Who You Are, series 2 finale, BBC Four review - Spanish drama literally took no prisoners

Jasper Rees

So, if you’re reading this you probably trudged all the weary way to the very end of I Know Who You Are. Or you didn’t but still want to find out what the hell happened. After 20-plus hours of twisting, turning, overblown drama, long-service medals are in order for all who flopped over the line.

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Love, Lies & Records, BBC One review - Ashley Jensen too good to be true

Jasper Rees

Love, Lies & Records (BBC One) is one of those bathetic titles that are very Yorkshire. See also Last Tango in Halifax, which didn’t do badly. Sleepless in Settle is surely in development.

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