Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdue
The breakthrough Liverpudlian band's story told lovingly and not before time
This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and fallings-out, coping with huge success and its aftermath – not to mention sex, drugs, mental illness and death.
Imagine... My Name is Kwame, BBC One review - interesting but incomplete
Profile of Young Vic artistic director could go still further
Filmed, as one would, well, imagine, prior to lockdown, Imagine .... My Name is Kwame hearkens to what now seems a bygone era of full and buzzy playhouses and adventurous theatre-making that was about the live experience and not some facsimile online.
The Deceived, Channel 5 review - who's fooling who?
Confused drama can't decide whether it's a thriller or a ghost story
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again, except somebody had renamed it The House at Knockdara. This was the title of the first novel by Michael Callaghan, Cambridge literature don, aspiring writer and serial seducer of his female students. Played here by Emmett J Scanlan, in young-fogey tweeds and Ernest Hemingway beard, Callaghan had “F for Fake” running all the way through him.
Little Birds, Sky Atlantic review - decadence and intrigue in 1950s Morocco
Adaption of Anaïs Nin's stories is raunchy and risqué
Diarist, novelist and writer of erotica Anaïs Nin lived a brilliantly-coloured life littered with affairs with literary A-listers (Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell et al).
The Talk, Channel 4 review - coping with the legacy of racism
Black Britons discuss their personal struggles against prejudice
Shall we talk about racism? Currently we seem to be talking about it all the time, and it’s the question non-white parents in Britain sooner or later find themselves pondering as they watch their children grow up in our increasingly confrontational society.
Prodigal Son, Sky 1 review - meet Michael Sheen, psycho killer
Macabre humour and ghoulish killings make this a highly bingeable series
We knew that Michael Sheen was a skilful and versatile actor, but lately he’s been getting dangerously good. Last year he roared into the third season of The Good Fight as the outrageous drug-fuelled lawyer Roland Blum, like an explosive fusion of his fellow-Welshmen Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.
Our Baby: A Modern Miracle, Channel 4 review - trailblazing couple's amazing journey
Jake and Hannah Graf are Britain's first parents who are both transgender
On one level this documentary could be summed up as “parents have baby”, but since the parents in question are “Britain’s most prominent transgender couple”, it was a lot more complicated than that. Jake Graf used to be a woman and his wife Hannah was previously a man, and the path to having their first child caused them considerable soul-searching.
Laurel Canyon, Sky Documentaries review - musical bliss in lotus land
Evocative history of the Los Angeles musical community in the Sixties and Seventies
It was Alison Ellwood who directed 2013’s History of the Eagles, and now she’s at the helm of this new two-parter on Sky Documentaries, telling the story of the Los Angeles music scene from the mid-Sixties to the early Seventies.
Bears About the House, BBC Two review - uphill struggle to save hunted animals
How conservationist Giles Clark has been trying to rescue the persecuted bears of south-east Asia
Sun bears and moon bears are probably doomed, so why bother? Wildlife trafficking is a hugely profitable worldwide criminal enterprise, with small charities (fingers in the dyke, anyone?) doing their best to stem the flow.