thu 21/08/2025

tv

50 Shades of Gay, Channel 4 review - no better place in the world to be gay?

Mark Sanderson

It’s half a century since homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales, so who better to cast his gaze over the lie of the land than stately homo Rupert Everett?

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Melvyn Bragg on TV, BBC Two review – too many talking heads, too little action

Adam Sweeting

Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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Sudan: The Last of the Rhinos, BBC Two review - requiem for disappearing wildlife

Adam Sweeting

“The northern white rhinos are just a symbol of what we do to the natural world,” as one of the contributors to this haunting documentary put it.

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Who Should We Let In? Ian Hislop on the First Great Immigration Row, review – how history repeats itself

Barney Harsent

Immigration…immigration… immigration… that’s what we need! Not the words of record-breaking, tap-dancing trumpeter Roy Castle, rather it’s the gist of a Times leader from 1853 (admittedly, fairly heavily paraphrased).

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Chance, Universal review – Hugh Laurie is reborn as a film-noir shrink

Adam Sweeting

Hugh Laurie, in his new role of forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, tells us that he works with those who are “mutilated by life”, and we soon see that Chance himself falls into that category. He’s in the midst of a divorce, he only sees his daughter Nicole at weekends, and his work seems to fill him with a kind of morbid weariness.

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Ripper Street, BBC Two, Series 5 review – apocalypse looms in Victorian Whitechapel

Adam Sweeting

There has always been an air of incipient doom hovering over Ripper Street, since the show is more of a laboratory of lost souls than a mere detective drama.

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Murdered For Being Different, BBC Three review - unbearable but unmissable

Jasper Rees

Heaven alone knows we've pressing anxieties enough to preoccupy us, but if you have the emotional bandwidth to accommodate more, the iPlayer can oblige. Available now on BBC Three is the latest in what now becomes a trilogy of heartrending dramas with Murdered in the title.

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Riviera, Sky Atlantic review - codswallop on the Côte d'Azur

Mark Sanderson

W Somerset Maugham, who knew a thing or two about the dark side, summed up the Riviera as “a sunny place for shady people”. On the evidence of this first episodeRiviera is a funny place for shitty people.

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Fearless, ITV review - Helen McCrory lights up dense conspiracy thriller

Jasper Rees

Emma Banville is almost too good to be true: a human rights lawyer who houses Syrian refugees, wins the most hopeless cases of wrongful conviction, won’t be bullied by anyone – coppers, prison wardens, the system. OK she smokes, presumably for the stress, and pints of lager don’t sit quite right in her hand. And she’s trying to adopt a child with, somewhat implausibly, John Bishop.

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The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mist

Mark Sanderson

There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the sort.

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