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The South Bank Show: Mark Rylance, Sky Arts 1

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 25 February 2015

Going into this programme, it dawned on me that I knew next to nothing about Mark Rylance's background – where he came from, who his parents were, what he does in his personal life. Having reached the end credits I was little the wiser, other than having learned that he has a wife called Claire, since none of it fell within the purview of Melvyn Bragg's interviewing.

Hostages, BBC Four

Tom Birchenough Sunday, 22 February 2015

Hostages certainly whips along. We’re straight into conflict from the very start of the first episode, except it soon transpires that the real action will be taking place elsewhere. And it’ll be tighter, more excruciating than the bash-down-the-door atmosphere of the opening scene, which serves to introduce us to Adam Rubin (Jonah Lotan), a top operator in Israeli counter-terrorism who’s on his last day of service and concluding his final mission successfully.

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Reinventing the Royals, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting Friday, 20 February 2015

It's the story they tried to ban! Reinventing the Royals was supposed to have been broadcast in January, but was yanked from the schedules when Prince Charles's staff at Clarence House withheld archive footage, apparently because of a behind-the-scenes battle between royal advisers.

Saints and Sinners: Britain's Millennium of Monasteries, BBC Four

Florence Hallett Friday, 20 February 2015

When in Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies Thomas Cromwell exclaims in exasperation, “to each monk, one bed; to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them?” he sums up the state of moral decay into which the monasteries had apparently lapsed by the time of their dissolution.

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The Romanians Are Coming, Channel 4

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 18 February 2015

The Romanians Are Coming was the immigration story from the other side. Bustling along with the wry, sometimes desperate comedy (and themed music) of a Balkan film, its characters said things about themselves that others would hardly get away with. “I’m going to tell you the stories of some of the arseholes like me who came to take your jobs,” said narrator Alex Fechete Petru at the beginning of James Bluemel’s revealing three-parter.

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UKIP: The First 100 Days, Channel 4

Florence Hallett Tuesday, 17 February 2015

As worst-case scenarios go, the prospect of a UKIP government in a little under three months’ time is a frightening but unlikely one – isn’t it? That they have only two MPs, and leader Nigel Farage is yet to find a seat, has done nothing to stop UKIP setting the political agenda, bulldozing its way to centre stage to demand a place in the forthcoming televised election debates.

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The Casual Vacancy, BBC One

Jasper Rees Monday, 16 February 2015

The broomsticks are back in the cupboard, wands are no longer at the ready, and no one is casting spells in cod Latin. JK Rowling’s first novel for adults has made its inevitable journey from page to screen. The first view of a picturesque Cotswolds village – a mannikin in erotic underwear provocatively on all fours in a shop window – says it succinctly: we’re not in Hogwarts any more.

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Indian Summers, Channel 4

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 15 February 2015

In the tradition of A Passage to India, The Jewel in the Crown and Staying On, Indian Summers is ambitious, a serious soap attempting to show the dying days of the Raj through a host of interwoven personal and political attachments. Passions run high in the foothills of the Himalayas, cool in the Indian summer, but X-rated for human relationships.

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Asylum, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Tuesday, 10 February 2015

The BBC is keen to point out to anyone who'll listen that this new political satire is not, repeat not, about Julian Assange. They'll allow that it was in part inspired by the WikiLeaks founder's situation, but any similarity between him and Dan Hern, a preening egotist who leaked official documents and sought asylum in a South American embassy in central London, is purely coincidental.

Better Call Saul, Netflix

Adam Sweeting Monday, 09 February 2015

Finally the moment the Breaking Bad diaspora has been waiting for, with the arrival of Vince Gilligan's new show about the earlier career of New Mexico's least scrupulous lawyer, Saul Goodman. Mind you, the title is a little bit misleading, because Saul doesn't exist yet. In this incarnation, he's still just a hustling low-life called Jimmy McGill, a man who never knowingly leaves any barrel unscraped.