First Person: The Estate We're In

Introducing a powerful new documentary about the UK housing crisis

Situated next to the beautiful Welsh Harp reservoir in North London, the West Hendon council estate was built in the 1960s to provide 680 homes to low income families. I first went there in November 2014. I had been following various housing stories around London and had heard about an estate where residents were fighting a multi-million pound regeneration which was forcing them out of their homes and where land valued at £12 million had been sold to developers for just £3.

The Prosecutors: Real Crime and Punishment, BBC Four

Intriguing snoop inside the world of the Crown Prosecution Service

Murder is entertainment, which is why crime and the legal process are on television every night. But where drama and documentary focus on criminals and the police who catch them – and the barristers who cross-examine them in court – vanishingly little attention is paid to the worker bees of the legal process. That's partly because the Crown Prosecution Service is a shy organisation. The Prosecutors: Real Crime and Punishment is the first time cameras have been allowed to watch the CPS at work.

DVD: Something Different/A Bagful of Fleas

DVD: SOMETHING DIFFERENT/A BAGFUL OF FLEAS Early 1960s rediscoveries from the Czech New Wave are astonishingly fresh and inspired

Early 1960s rediscoveries from the Czech New Wave are astonishingly fresh and inspired

The expectation that late means great is one embedded deeply in our culture: that the consummation of creative endeavour finds its peak towards life’s conclusion, with experience assimilated into a rich finale. These two films from the very start of the career of the eminent Czech director Věra Chytilová (1929-2014), and the beginning of the remarkable movement that became the Czech New Wave, are a salutary reminder of the opposite, showing just what happens when youth bursts out with supreme energy.

The Propaganda Game

THE PROPAGANDA GAME Compelling documentary on misinformation about and within North Korea

Compelling documentary on misinformation about and within North Korea

The set-up behind Spanish film-maker Álvaro Longoria’s intelligent documentary on North Korea is almost as bizarre and unlikely as the regime he’s attempting to probe.

Who's the Boss?, BBC Two

WHO'S THE BOSS?, BBC TWO Workers do the hiring in a documentary that doesn't quite get the job done

Workers do the hiring in a documentary that doesn't quite get the job done

Who’s the Boss? occupies a square-eyed quadrant somewhere between Gogglebox and The Apprentice. If you like those, you’ll probably like this jaunty workplace experiment in which it’s not the boss who hires applicants for a new job, but the workforce. In Ancient Rome they called it Saturnalia, when for one day of the year the hierarchy was reversed. Nowadays you’d call it Siliconalia because like more or less everything these days the idea originated in Silicon Valley.

DVD: Taxi Tehran

DVD: TAXI TEHRAN Inventive and subversive faux-documentary

Inventive and subversive faux-documentary

Taxi Tehran fits neatly into a recent tradition of films set entirely in cars; Jim Jarmusch’s Night On Earth comes to mind, as well as Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. Initially we’re led to believe that we’re watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary, assembled from dashboard footage shot on a cheap digital camera by director Jafar Panahi as he drives a taxi through the streets of Tehran.

Rise of the Superstar Vloggers, BBC Three

RISE OF THE SUPERSTAR VLOGGERS, BBC THREE Don't look now, but TV is dead: scary primer on the frontline of new media

Don't look now, but TV is dead: scary primer on the frontline of new media

This debate about the future of the BBC might be missing the point. In the black corner scowls the Dark Lord of Swingeing Arts Cuts John Whittingdale, while in the fluffy corner is everyone who doesn’t want anything to change. By their “I heart Lyse Doucet” shall you know the latter. We’re all of us, on both sides of the fence, of a certain vintage. The kids, who like it or not seem an absolute dead-cert shoo-in to inherit the future, haven’t got a dog in this fight. Why? Because they don’t watch TV. Any more than they buy newspapers. They watch YouTube.

The Real Marigold Hotel, BBC Two

THE REAL MARIGOLD HOTEL, BBC TWO Real-life trial at retirement living in Jaipur curiously disavows past precedents

Real-life trial at retirement living in Jaipur curiously disavows past precedents

One novel and two movies, but the BBC cheekily claims that this three-part series was inspired by Deborah Moggach’s 2004 novel These Foolish Things, and the pair of films The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – but not related. How did the programme-makers come up with this, and keep a straight face?

The Story of China, BBC Two

THE STORY OF CHINA, BBC TWO Meet the new China – but how different is it from the old China?

Meet the new China – but how different is it from the old China?

China’s tumultuous recent past attempted to selectively obliterate the history of one of the world’s great and ancient civilisations, with the neatly complementary result in the past several decades of a huge upsurge in Chinese studies, East and West, from publications to exhibitions to enormous advances in archaeology.  At the same time, a sense of preserving the material past has been threatened by urban development, a habit copied perhaps from the West.