Presumed Innocent, Apple TV+ review - you read the book and saw the movie...

★★★★ PRESUMED INNOCENT, APPLE TV+ You read the book and saw the movie...

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in absorbing TV adaptation of Scott Turow's legal thriller

Scott Turow published his cunningly-wrought legal thriller in 1987, and Alan J Pakula’s powerful movie version, starring Harrison Ford, appeared in 1990. Enough time has elapsed, perhaps, for Apple TV’s revised version of Presumed Innocent for the streaming age.

Eric, Netflix review - a fairytale of New York

★★★ ERIC, NETFLIX Abi Morgan's drama is a strange mix of urban grime and magic realism

Abi Morgan's drama is a strange mix of urban grime and magic realism

New York in the 1980s is the setting for Abi Morgan’s new six-part drama, and it’s a city riddled with squalor, homelessness, racism and rampant crime. The Aids pandemic is also beginning to rear its hideous head.

Rebus, BBC One review - revival of Ian Rankin's Scottish 'tec hits the jackpot

★★★★ REBUS, BBC ONE Revival of Ian Rankin's Scottish 'tec hits the jackpot

Richard Rankin makes a compelling debut as the unorthodox Edinburgh cop

The previous incarnation of Ian Rankin’s Scottish detective on ITV starred, in their contrasting styles, John Hannah and Ken Stott. For this Rebus redux, arriving nearly 25 years after the original first series began, screenwriter Gregory Burke has reworked the character as a younger Detective Sergeant, drawing on the spirit of Rankin’s original novels but with the author’s blessing to take the character somewhere new.

Red Eye, ITV review - Anglo-Chinese relations tested in junk-food thriller

Richard Armitage returns in another preposterous potboiler

Aircraft hijacking is a ghoulishly popular theme in films and TV, but Red Eye brings a slightly different twist to the perils of air travel. This time, North China Air’s Flight 357, from London to Beijing, hasn’t been hijacked, but it has become the scene of a string of inexplicable murders, carried out by unknown assassin(s) as it cruises at 40,000 feet.

Anthracite, Netflix review - murderous mysteries in the French Alps

Who can unravel the ghastly secrets of the town of Lévionna?

Ludicrous plotting and a tangled skein of coincidences hold no terrors for the makers of this frequently baffling French drama. Nonetheless, its story of a bizarre cult, a rapacious medical corporation and a trail of dead bodies stretching back through 30 years of history does somehow keep you coming back for more, if only to wonder how much more berserk proceedings can become.

Scoop, Netflix review - revisiting a Right Royal nightmare

★★★★ SCOOP, NETFLIX Gripping dramatisation of Newsnight's fateful Prince Andrew interview

Gripping dramatisation of Newsnight's fateful Prince Andrew interview

What with the interminable Harry and Meghan saga, the death of the Queen and the recent health scares for Kate and King Chuck, this is just what the Royal Family needed – the exhumation of Prince Andrew’s catastrophic 2019 Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis which probed his alarm-bell-jangling relationship with serial sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

This Town, BBC One review - lurid melodrama in Eighties Brummieland

★★ THIS TOWN, BBC ONE Lurid melodrama in Eighties Brummieland

Steven Knight revisits his Midlands roots, with implausible consequences

Industrious screenwriter Steven Knight has brought us (among many other things) Peaky Blinders, SAS: Rogue Heroes and even Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, but This Town may not be remembered as one of his finest hours. Here, we find Knight revisiting his Midlands background for a story that begins in 1981, during Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister. There’s rioting on the streets, unemployment is soaring and Bobby Sands is on hunger strike in Belfast.

Passenger, ITV review - who are they trying to kid?

Andrew Buchan's screenwriting debut leads us nowhere

The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan, Passenger ends up resembling a bunch of ingredients looking for a cake. While characters come out with such meta-observations as “this isn’t Twin Peaks” and “this isn’t Broadchurch” – Buchan having been one of the stars of BroadchurchPassenger contains echoes of both of them, and rather louder ones of Happy Valley.