For his latest jaunt the former Tory minister swaps his colourful linen jackets for a rather less fetching gilet to explore the largest island in the Mediterranean, which at various times in its history has been under Greek, Roman, Arab and Norman rule. Portillo spends a long weekend in its capital, Palermo, where he revels in what he calls its “exotic disorder” of street cafes, markets and crumbling buildings. As ever, he throws himself into local life, eating a spleen sandwich (an echo of the island’s once thriving Jewish community) and helping coffee roasters to blend their beans and a duchess to prepare lunch at the palazzo where her late father-in-law, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, finished his seminal Sicilian novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard).
But as well having good-natured banter with locals, Portillo addresses the less tourist-friendly history of the island – its long-standing link to the Mafia which, despite valiant efforts by residents and politicians, still affects life today – before he checks out the transformation of a crumbling 19th-century palazzo. He’s clearly having fun: “This is going to be edgy but it’s going to make us feel alive,” he says. His enthusiasm is infectious.
The cultural phenomenon that gave us Gangnam Style and boyband BTS is a multibillion-dollar global business. This series follows five young British performers as they try to be the first Western group to break into the K-pop industry. They go to South Korea to be put through a demanding singing and dancing training programme, and the culture shock is massive.
Marvin and Rochelle Humes return with a new series of the music quiz show where contestants vie for a £10,000 prize. Some questions are easy-peasy but the range of knowledge required would stump all but the keenest music fan. The gripping history series about the unheralded acts of bravery by women in the conflict concludes; among the tales tonight are of snipers in Soviet Russia, the work of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service, and correspondents who defied Allied Command to report directly from the frontline.
More stories about folk who live and work along Scotland’s North Coast 500; young entrepreneurs Shona and Lewis run a takeaway truck serving prime Highland produce, while the Castle of Mey, once the Queen Mother’s holiday home, is being prepared for its summer opening. We also catch up with Michael, one of the rangers who protects the area’s beauty, politely reminding people to take their litter home and to not climb fragile old buildings. The scenery is, as ever, the star.
The channel’s fascination with the famous couple continues with this documentary charting how they went from fairy-tale love affair to – in some circles – personae non grata. Part two is on Sunday. There’s little chat, but plenty of music as the singer-songwriter and his Bad Seeds colleague Warren Ellis perform songs from their joint venture Carnage (an album which was recorded during lockdown) and 2019 album Ghosteen.
We also see Cave’s ceramics workshop where he is working on – what else – a Devil-themed series. EB White’s classic children’s story of Wilbur the runt pig who is saved from slaughter by a singing spider has long been a bedtime favourite. This live-action adaptation manages to live up to its lovely source material, painting ordinary details with rare prettiness.
Dakota Fanning plays Fern, the farmer’s daughter who adopts Wilbur; the starry voice cast includes Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Redford and Steve Buscemi. As the sticky, sweltering summer nights roll on, there’s no better time to draw the curtains and hide from the heat with Jon M Chu’s electric, colour-drenched musical. It’s based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning Broadway smash hit, a show which made him one of the most in-demand writers and composers in the US – without it, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get Hamilton off the ground.
The film is set in the bustling NYC enclave of Washington Heights, home to a majority Hispanic community. Usnavi (Twisters’ Anthony Ramos) moved there as a boy from the Dominican Republic, and dreams of swapping his creaking neighbourhood bodega for his late father’s old beachside bar back in his beloved homeland. Ramos injects every song and dance with a Gene Kelly-esque twinkle, as he sets his sights on capturing the affections of local beauty Vanessa (Melissa Barrera).
The songs are great, but it’s the dance routines that shine; choreographer Christopher Scott blends Mambo, Afro-Cuban and breakdancing to dazzling effect. If Chu’s forthcoming adaptation of Wicked (released in cinemas in November) possesses even an ounce of In the Heights’ joy, we’re in for a treat. No man in Hollywood does the haunted and tortured action-hero quite like Liam Neeson, and this high-octane thriller from Mark Williams (Ozark) certainly plays to the actor’s strengths.
Neeson stars as a former Marine-turned-bank robber who decides to turn himself into the FBI. However, his good deed goes woefully awry when corrupt agents conspire to set him up. Jeffrey Donovan and Anthony Ramos also star.
This enjoyable spy thriller is inspired by Tom Clancy’s series of Cold War novels, and whose lead character has already been played on screen by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. It’s a bit of a muddle of running and shooting, and Chris Pine’s titular Ryan is no Ford, but it’s hard to resist getting swept up in the urgency of all the action. Keira Knightley and Kenneth Branagh (who also directs) co-star.
Over the past few years, cinema has exploded with “eat the rich” satires: just look at Triangle of Sadness, Saltburn or The Menu. Director Tommy Boulding muscles in on the class-action with this debut feature, which pits a group of working-class Peckham housekeepers against a gang of posh, villainous fox-hunters. It’s a solid premise, but the writing is often too clunky to reach greater heights.
Samantha Bond stars. “Now I know what you’re thinking,” says Jay Blades, stepping over an “I’ve been expecting you, Mr Bond” doormat, “‘Why is Jay Blades, who fixes furniture on the telly, around the home of Britain’s best loved actor, Dame Judi Dench?’” He’s not wrong. The answer is that the two have become the best of unlikely friends since Dench’s appearance on The Repair Shop in 2022.
Hence this charmingly sweet special in which the odd couple take to the road to learn more about each other’s very different backgrounds. Blades begins by inviting Dench to his beloved east London, where the veteran thespian takes on her most challenging role yet: selling fruit at the local market. Dench takes Blades to the Old Vic theatre, where she made her professional debut as Ophelia in Hamlet.
There is a poignant moment where an emotional Dench recites Sonnet 29 and Blades – who is severely dyslexic – returns the favour by conquering “To be, or not to be”. Their friendship is certainly unusual, but warm and genuine too. “You’re 89,” says Blades at one point.
Dench, in mock outrage, splutters: “Don’t say that, cut!” It turns out she doesn’t want to be called “mature”, she wants to be a “bird”. This delightful two-part experiment follows a diverse group of children, aged between 9 and 10, as they navigate the world without adult supervision. Tonight, for instance, they are tasked with helping out at a sweet shop and ordering from a fancy restaurant.
Network and Chinatown actress Faye Dunaway is a bona fide Hollywood star. Yet this entertaining portrait doesn’t shy away from her reputation for being “difficult”. Dunaway talks candidly about how her struggles with bipolar disorder have led to erratic behaviour on set; she also insists that it may be the reason why she is such a ferociously raw actor.
Benjamin Britten’s haunting magnum opus, the War Requiem, is performed by Antonio Pappano’s London Symphony Orchestra, as well as the London Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Chorus and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir. It’s followed by repeats of documentaries Britten’s War Requiem: Staging a Masterpiece (9.30pm) and Benjamin Britten on Camera (10.
30pm). Emma Willis and Vernon Kay host this night welcoming back Team GB athletes from the Paris Olympics. Filmed last night at the AO Arena in Manchester, there are performances from Rag’n’Bone Man, Clean Bandit and Pete Tong.
Rappers Krept and Konan are also set to perform a song championing female Olympic trailblazers from the past 100 years. The second part of this extraordinary true-crime documentary focuses on the five secret children abandoned in New Zealand by Leigh Sabine, the deceased elderly “eccentric” suspected of murder. It is a staggering portrait of selfishness and cruelty.
The story of son Steven, who has never spoken publicly about his wretched childhood, is particularly affecting. Last week this jaw-dropping documentary detailed how wife Mary was deceived by husband, bigamist and conman William Allen Jordan. As she recalls tonight, though, she was only the tip of the iceberg.
Jordan had in fact been juggling multiple partners and families. No wonder, observes Mary, he was always exhausted. Two men (Farley Granger and Robert Walker) meet on a train heading out of Washington.
Both are itching to get rid of a troublesome relation, so they decide to hatch a murder scheme. If the fear factor is not quite as deft as it would prove to be in Hitchcock’s later films, it is nevertheless riveting, as is his dual manipulation of sympathy and surprise. For more Hitchcock, Psycho follows at 10pm.
David Frankel’s tear-jerking romcom, based on John Grogan’s autobiography, follows a pair of newlywed journalists (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) who move to Florida and pursue jobs at rival papers. To better ease them into family life they buy a hard-to-control labrador, Marley. Remembered mostly for its ability to have you sobbing into a clutch of tissues, this is a decent watch for the whole family, dog-lovers or not.
The film that cementedJim Carrey’s reputation as a towering comedy presence tells the story of Stanley Ipkiss, a bank clerk who becomes a manic superhero when he puts on a magical green mask. Packed full of classic cartoonish moments and physical riffs that showcase Carrey’s comedy at its peak, Chuck Russell’s eclectic, family friendly flick also established Cameron Diaz’s career as a Hollywood leading lady. In a way that distinguishes it from Ridley Scott’s original, this sequel mulls the meatiest questions around: do life’s currents run deeper than the things we can see, hear and touch? Director Denis Villeneuve (Dune) maps out one of the most visually spectacular and staggering blockbusters of our time, as LAPD Officer K (a brilliantly nuanced, chilling turn from Ryan Gosling) learns of a secret that could plunge society into chaos.
BBC comedy is enjoying something of a grown-up moment. Only a week after David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood’s excellent Daddy Issues, comes another top-class offering featuring a man negotiating a midlife crisis in the company of a much smarter younger woman. The pairing here is lawyer Abe (Darren Boyd), who’s recently begun living with his girlfriend, the Canadian tetraplegic artist and model Freya (Kyla Harris, co-creator with Lee Getty).
With their privacy already compromised by Freya’s need for a 24-hour live-in carer – a situation graphically illustrated in the opening scene – the arrival on their doorstep of Freya’s chaotic best friend Jo (Elena Saurel), seeking somewhere to stay, does not bode well. Among the heavy themes handled – grief and depression, alongside living with disability – Freya and Jo’s spiky, sparky relationship provides much of the laughs and best exemplifies the firecracker quality of the writing and acting (be warned, some of the humour is very near the knuckle, especially around the more intimate necessities of tetraplegic care). The superb cast includes Sally Phillips, Tim Key, Aasiya Shah and Ed Bluemel.
A week of high drama awaits as a group of Ramsay Street residents head into the Outback and – if the Neighbours press bulletin headline “Death in the Outback” Week is to be believed – not all of them return. With veteran series actor Ryan Moloney already confirmed to be leaving the show, could this spell a nasty end for Toadfish? A new quiz show in which competitors face torrents of questions, answering against the clock, to build up cash pots for the big-money final round. Jason Manford is your host.
Making Succession look like child’s play, this two-part documentary follows the Machiavellian rise of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman from minor royal to the country’s de facto ruler. Tonight’s opener traces how, since his early twenties, “MBS” ruthlessly outmanoeuvred and swept aside the many powerful figures who stood between him and the throne. The senseless shooting of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel and 29-year-old Ashley Dale within two days in Liverpool in 2022 shocked Britain.
As one police officer says here, the murders “took things to a new level” in the city. This gripping four-part documentary (continuing tomorrow) tracks the intensive Merseyside Police investigation that eventually brought the culprits to justice. A grim report following a three-year investigation by BBC Scotland’s Disclosure strand into modern slavery aboard UK fishing vessels.
Reporter Chris Clements hears from migrant workers who thought that they were coming to Britain for a better life, only to find hardship and misery at the hands of an international illegal-exploitation network. Yet more true crime in a documentary series re-examining the murders of four Texan air stewardesses in the 1970s and 1980s, and questioning whether the wrong man was jailed for their deaths. Featuring interviews with friends, family, police and journalists, as well as the man convicted, all four parts air overnight.
Inspired by Carson McCullers’s novella The Ballad of the Sad Café, Percy Adlon’s sunny comedy centres on German tourist Jasmin (Marianne Sägebrecht), who leaves her husband behind after an argument in the Californian desert and storms off to the Bagdad Cafe, where she forges a surprising friendship with the outpost’s moody owner (CCH Pounder). Jack Palance co-stars. Director Christy Hall (who wrote the script for current box-office smash hit It Ends With Us) crafts a tender portrait of love and loss in NYC in this Lost in Translation-esque drama.
Dakota Johnson plays a young woman who, upon returning to Manhattan from a trip, shares a candid conversation with her taxi driver (Sean Penn) about their past relationships and future hopes. Hope Dickson Leach’s slow-burning drama is a beautiful, introspective portrait of a young woman. When Clove Catto (Game of Thrones’s Ellie Kendrick), a vet in training, is told that her brother Harry has killed himself, she returns to the idyllic Somerset farm where she grew up.
A reckoning with her difficult father (David Troughton) ensues. The landscape, the atmosphere and Kendrick herself are all magnificent. Last year Saving Lives in Leeds took us behind the scenes of an NHS hospital, with a focus on the enormous waiting lists that loom over doctors and surgeons.
This six-part sequel series picks up that thread at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. In neurosurgery, for instance, almost 200 people are waiting for life-saving procedures. Tonight, consultant George Eralil prioritises the endearingly upbeat 19-year-old Chelsea, whose extremely rare brain tumour resides close to areas that control her speech and ability to walk.
The operation is exceptionally difficult and its risks haunt Eralil, who is crushingly aware of the power that he holds in his hands. The desperate state of the NHS is writ large in the vascular department, which treats life-threatening conditions caused by diseased blood vessels. Surgeon Lewis Meecham has a waiting list of 78.
He arrives on a morning set to perform three procedures. However, a flood of emergency cases means that he must cancel all but one. “This is a perfect example of how the NHS runs every single day,” he says, dejected.
“If I knew it was getting better it’d be fine but I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Facing the second heat this week are former EastEnders star Danielle Harold, actress Rochenda Sandall, comedian Eshaan Akbar, Love Island’s Chloe Burrows and Gladiator Harry Aikines-Aryeetey (aka Nitro). At the same time over on ITV1, Cooking with the Stars tasks quarter-finalists Carol Vorderman, Linford Christie and Ellie Simmonds with serving up a family favourite dish.
This week the ever-amiable rail historian Tim Dunn finds himself in Stockwell station in south London, where he explores the remnants of a deep-level bomb shelter used during the Second World War. Meanwhile, his partner-in-ferroequinology Siddy Holloway visits the depot for the Docklands Light Railway to learn about a new technology which can alert staff to passengers on the tracks. Flintoff is settling into his role as father figure to his rag-tag cricket team.
Take the heart-to-heart he shares in this second episode with Afghan refugee Adnan, who is struggling to adjust to life on tour in India. Or the moment he is moved to tears by Ben’s heartfelt speech to schoolchildren. JJ Chalmers and Julia Bradbury seek out more naval stories.
But tonight features an extraordinary segment in which Rob Bell spends four days aboard HMS Trenchant, one of the UK’s nuclear submarines. It’s tense TV. At one point the crew are forced to dive to evade a foreign warship; while Bell also witnesses a test drill for a nuclear launch.
It is not the size of the painting that matters, but the stature of the painter. The auction room’s biggest lot this week is a postcard-sized painting by Constable. Elsewhere, cabinet-maker Kieran fixes up a 19th-century boules table ready for sale.
It is rare to watch a polished series with such high-profile interviewees, which simmers with such rage. This distressing episode on the Rwandan genocide details how diplomatic cables forewarning the horror were ignored by the US state department. This not-so-cuddly biopic (not to be confused with Disney’s 2018 Ewan McGregor-led tear-jerker Christopher Robin) reveals the sadness behind Winnie-the-Pooh – a broken family – and suggests that the idyll depicted in the books was a momentary respite from their trauma.
Domhnall Gleeson and Margot Robbie star as AA Milne and his wife, Dorothy, while Will Tilston is a delight as their young son, Christopher. Hitchcock’s may be regarded as the best, but this third film version of John Buchan’s 1915 novel is the one that sticks the closest to the text. Brimming with twists and turns, it stars Robert Powell as spy-catcher Richard Hannay.
The final scene, in which Hannay dangles from the hands of Big Ben, is excellent; Powell later reprised his role in the 1988 TV series Hannay. Before the brilliant 2023 TV mini-series came this simmering kitchen drama from director Philip Barantini. Filmed in one frantic, continuous shot, Boiling Point follows Stephen Graham’s spiralling head chef Andy as he (unsuccessfully) tries to keep it all together.
Jason Flemyng is terrific in support as Andy’s villainous ex-boss, chasing past debts, while Alice Feetham grips as a hapless hostess. This harrowing documentary film shines a light on one of the most tragic events in Ukraine’s history. In 1933, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones was smuggled into the country to report on the famine (or “Holodomor”) orchestrated by Joseph Stalin that resulted in the deaths of four million people.
Stalin, intent on keeping Ukraine in line, had confiscated crops from farmers as a way of punishing the rural dwellers brave enough to defy communism, leaving millions to starve. The documentary details how Jones, upon returning home to the UK, desperately tried to get authorities and the government to intervene in what was occuring in the Soviet Union; but Stalin’s propaganda machine and far-reaching power prevented him from succeeding. Using previously unpublished archive footage and photographs, Soviet films and clips from Jones’s own work, Seeds of Hunger offers significant insight to the cause and consequences of one of the world’s most horrific humanitarian disasters.
It makes for timely viewing given the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and debates about Vladimir Putin’s government’s role in hiding evidence of its wrongdoings. Everyone knows that The Repair Shop is more about the weepy backstories than the antiques, and tonight’s episode is no different. Jay Blades and the team are tasked with fixing a dictaphone once owned by Anglo-Russian author William Gerhardie – by his godson, Sebastian – that contains a recording unheard for 80 years, while elsewhere on the restoration list is a sentimental stuffed cat and a broken fruit bowl.
The celebrity pairings – Kelly Brook and her husband Jeremy, Ted Lasso’s Kola Bokinni and his cousin Mary, radio host Scott Mills and his husband Sam, and presenter Jeff Brazier and son Freddy – race further towards their Chilean endpoint, departing the Brazilian beach town of Canoa Quebrada to take on the vast oasis of the Chapada Diamantina National Park. In this penultimate episode of series two, Dougray Scott’s grizzled DI Ray Lennox ramps up the search for the killer wreaking terror on Edinburgh after they target one of his own team. Could the clue to their motives lie in a case from 1992? It concludes on Thursday.
A 2023 stand-up special from the London comedian, best known for hit comedies King Gary and Murder in Successville, riffing on everything from leaving school with zero qualifications to life and banter on a building site, and fatherhood. Shown as part of BBC Two’s current classic sitcom season, a repeat of the final episode of Peter Spence and Christopher Bond’s aristo-satire. Audrey’s (Penelope Keith) long-held dreams of regaining control of the family manor (and Peter Bowles’s Richard’s affections) are offered a lifeline by the death of a wealthy relative.
Huge deposits, sky-high mortgage rates, unpredictable employment...
Home ownership is a pipe dream for many young people, but as reporter Daisy Maskell finds in this one-off doc, it’s not impossible. She meets twentysomethings building property portfolios despite the housing crisis. We’ve become accustomed to slick but surface-level musical biopics: Back to Black, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman.
Unfortunately, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s ode to reggae hero Bob Marley doesn’t fare much better, despite a gorgeous lead performance from Kingsley Ben-Adir. Greenlit by Marley’s children and widow, the story covers everything from assassination attempts to gigs and romances. Think of Ricard Cussó and Tania Vincent’s vivid animation as a lighter (and more child -friendly) take on the Gothic themes explored in Coraline and Coco.
To save her father from mad scientist Dr Maybe (voiced by Sam Neill), and prevent her planet’s destruction, a young girl (Jillian Nguyen) overcomes her fears to travel to a mysterious city of light. Tim Minchin voices fellow baddie Chihoohoo. South Korean director Bong Joon-ho became a critical darling after the 2020 Academy Awards, where he won Best Picture and Best Director with his searing class satire Parasite.
Snowpiercer, his first English-language film, is a superbly paced masterpiece set in a post-apocalyptic ice age, as a train stratified by social class endlessly circles the globe. Tilda Swinton, Chris Evans and Octavia Spencer are all dazzling. Michael Mosley completed this medical science series shortly before his tragic death earlier this year.
His wife, Dr Clare Bailey, wanted it to be broadcast, saying how one of her late husband’s “biggest passions was to reveal the extraordinary secrets of how our bodies work”. To that end, as fans of the presenter’s work have come to expect, he puts his own body under the microscope to help viewers to understand theirs. There are poignant moments as we see Mosley undergoing various tests to help to prolong a healthy life when we know that, ultimately, the randomness of the universe can sometimes decide our fate.
In the first of three episodes, Mosley meets Thomas, who is about to undergo pioneering brain surgery to alleviate his tremors, and Allen, who finds out if his experimental cancer treatment has been a success. Mosley also looks into the benefits of cold-water swimming and gamely takes a dip in a freezing pool. As ever he explains complicated science in relatable terms – describing the build-up of plaque in coronary arteries: “Think of this as the pipes in your house getting clogged up.
” Two very watchable US true-crime series – both boxsetted – land today on streaming service U (formerly UKTV Play). Guiltology describes how developments in DNA technology allow detectives to revisit cold cases, some decades old. The series opens with a burglary/homicide where DNA tests deliver a shocking revelation to the investigators.
In How to Rob a Bank, felons describe their audacious get-rich-quick crimes – some of the 14 bank robberies committed each day in the States. First up is a security guard for whom temptation became too much. Rarely can a participant in this show have known so little about their antecedents as presenter Paddy McGuinness, but researchers help him uncover his family’s Irish connections – and reveal that both his grandfathers served in wars, decades and continents apart.
Perhaps the most frightening thing about serial-killer GP Harold Shipman is that he might have gotten away with it – his victims were frail or elderly, or both, so their deaths did not arouse immediate suspicion. This fascinating one-off uses trial transcripts, reconstruction and interviews to examine how the prosecution made its case at trial. The sprawling zombie universe expands with a fourth spin-off series.
Picking up after the main series finale, it follows Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) as they head to Manhattan, which is cut off from the mainland, and has zombie hordes around every corner. This interview by fellow director Bryan Forbes – first broadcast in 1969 and featuring clips from Hitchcock’s movies – anchors the channel’s Hitchcock evening. It’s preceded by Strangers on a Train at 8pm, and followed by Psycho at 10.
35pm. Scene by Scene: Janet Leigh rounds things off at 12.20am.
Comedian and disability campaigner Rosie Jones returns with a third series (boxsetted) of her comedy showcase. All the acts joining her have a disability and tonight’s line-up includes Jonny Pelham, Lara Ricote and Tim Renkow. Narrated by David Attenborough, this inevitably stunning nature film follows a group of orangutans living in the jungles of Sumatra.
We meet eight-year-old Eden, who is about to face the biggest challenge of her life, as well as cute Rakus, who was the first wild animal to be filmed treating a wound with a medicinal herb. Expertly shot by Huw Cordey, this is an engrossing window into a species not entirely unlike our own. Director Zach Cregger’s frighteningly tense, craftily structured film is one of this decade’s finest horror-thrillers.
Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb in Detroit to find another guest (Bill Skarsgård) has already checked in. With nowhere else to go, she decides to stay the night – and soon discovers it’s not just the two of them who are home. The murderous Mother (Matthew Patrick Davis) will leave your hairs on end.
Sean Connery’s final turn as James Bond is packed with swagger and stylish action sequences, even if the plot is a bit wishy-washy. After a failed training mission, M (Edward Fox) becomes convinced that 007 is past his prime, and suspends him. But when Fatima Bush (Barbara Carrera) and her gang of terrorists steal two nukes from the US, M must do whatever it takes to get Bond back on board.
Viewers coming fresh to season two of Apple TV+’s powerful adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s sprawling novel – about a Korean family’s multi-generational struggles (largely against racism) in Japan – and hoping to pick up the story, would be best advised not to even try. Just go back to the beginning. Too much has already happened and the time-jumping storyline – which leaps erratically from 1945 Osaka to 1980s New York and points in between – doesn’t make allowances for anyone struggling to keep up.
It helps that series one is superb. The opening episode picks up exactly where season one’s finale left off, with the impoverished Baek family facing more pain and prejudice in a wartime Japan that’s slowly coming to terms with the inevitability of losing the fight against America. Following her husband’s incarceration, heroine Sunja (Minha Kim) is forced to make decisions that push her, and her sister, to the edge of criminality to feed their children.
Two generations on, ambitious fund manager Solomon (Jin Ha), struggling to get backers for a new venture in the wake of his dismissal, is buoyed by an offer of investment from an old friend. But is it all it seems? Top-class drama. Sun, sea and skinny-dipping, anyone? Pitched as a “jaw-dropping, drawer-dropping new series”, this Naked Attraction meets Love Island mash-up follows 10 British singletons spending time holidaying together in the buff, to see whether sparks fly.
Rylan hosts – clothed. A Proms concert by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and National Youth Choir of Scotland. As well as Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the programme features Mel Bonis’s Salome and Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with soloist Anthony McGill.
For years the Queen guitarist has been leading a campaign to stop badgers from being “scapegoated” in the fight against bovine TB. Some 230,000 badgers have been culled since 2011 without any reduction in rates of the disease. In this eye-opening documentary, May points an accusing finger at the government’s “grossly inefficient” TB testing regime and meets farmers to make the case for a new method of TB control.
A night of Queen-themed repeats follows on BBC Four. In the final edition of the horse-racing series, as the season nears its close, a three-way sprint for the Trainers’ Championship title opens between reigning champion Paul Nicholls, his protégé Dan Skelton and Irish trainer Willie Mullins. What did The Mandalorian’s Pedro Pascal ask fans to stop doing? What got Nigella Lawson’s viewers tittering in 2020? Babatunde Aléshé, Daisy May Cooper, siblings Natasia and Jamie Demetriou, Judi Love and Russell Howard compete to see who knows the most about television.
Marilyn Monroe’s stardom may have dimmed in recent years but it remains bright enough for her still to be a household name 62 years after her death, aged 36, in 1962. This generous profile features rarely seen video and audio interviews with Monroe as well as archive contributions from people who knew her at the peak of her fame. This perky animation from the ever-inventive Illumination (Despicable Me) will have the whole family howling with laughter (the script is by Mike “White Lotus” White after all).
Two New England ducklings crave adventure but are held back by their timid dad (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) and uncle (Danny DeVito). However, thanks to some cajoling from the ducklings’ mum (Elizabeth Banks), the family decide to embark on a journey to Jamaica. Is there a film that delivers a greater infusion of pure joy than The Italian Job? The cast of this chirpily patriotic movie is led by the peerless Michael Caine, who plays Charlie Croker, a disconcertingly friendly criminal who inherits a daring plan to rob the Fiat factory in Turin by causing the world’s largest traffic jam.
Noël Coward co-stars as the urbane crime lord Mr Bridger; Peter Collinson directs with bags of wit and vibrancy. This gentle, eye-moistening comedy is based on the true story of a group of Women’s Institute members in Yorkshire who raised money for leukaemia research by posing naked for a charity calendar. Helen Mirren, Julie Walters and Celia Imrie are among the women stripping off (well, more or less: certain body parts are always obscured by tea cups, cream buns and the like).
Jam-packed with British talent and stunning scenery to boot. Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell star as the Bielski brothers, three Jews who escaped from Nazi-occupied Poland and helped to form a partisan army in the wild forests of Belarus. As well as fighting tooth-and-nail, their aim is to rescue people from the ghettos – but those objectives may not be compatible.
Edward Zwick’s direction is crude and moralistic, but it’s saved by the excellent acting from the talented leads..
