mon 26/05/2025

tv

My Brilliant Friend, Sky Atlantic review - rich revelations of childhood

Tom Birchenough

This opening episode of My Brilliant Friend was a stunning symphony in grey.

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Louis Theroux's Altered States: Choosing Death, BBC Two review - profound and moving

Marina Vaizey

The toughest subject you can imagine: when, and how, would you choose death over life? This riveting film examined that excruciating dilemma within the legal frameworks on offer to some of the terminally ill in the United States.

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Our Classical Century, BBC Four review - enthusiasm and delight

Marina Vaizey

Jerusalem!

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They Shall Not Grow Old, BBC Two review - Peter Jackson's Great War finale

Saskia Baron

Peter Jackson has form when it comes to re-examining cinema history. In 1995 he made Forgotten Silver, a documentary about Colin McKenzie, a New Zealand filmmaker who not only made the first sound recordings but also invented the tracking shot and the close-up, and pioneered colour film, back in the 1910s long before his counterparts in America and France.

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WW1: The Last Tommies, BBC Four review - Great War stories

Jasper Rees

“Why should I go out and kill somebody I never knew? There was no reason at all in it in my way of thinking.” Britain’s very last Tommy was Harry Patch, born in 1898, conscripted in 1916 and still alive on his 111th birthday in 2009.

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix review - girl power goes supernatural

Adam Sweeting

Not to be confused with Nineties supernatural sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Netflix’s new incarnation of the high-schooler with infernal powers is a ghoulish thrill-ride which boldly surfs the dark side, with a pronounced feminist and...

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Imagine... Becoming Cary Grant, BBC One review - contemplative portrait of a star

Saskia Baron

Mark Kidel has made a beautiful, ethereal film projecting his version of Cary Grant and as such it’s destined to be picked over by the actor’s legions of fans, each of whom will have a different version. But what would the man himself have thought if he’d lived to see Becoming Cary Grant?

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Strangers, Series Finale, ITV review - Eastern promise goes unfulfilled

Adam Sweeting

After seeming to spend an interminable amount of time wandering around in a daze and blundering up blind alleys, Strangers finally gathered its wits and cantered towards the finishing tape with a renewed sense of purpose in the final two episodes.

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The Little Drummer Girl, BBC One, review - latest Le Carré just passes audition

Jasper Rees

When after six novels John Le Carré turned away from the Cold War, he turned towards another simmering post-war conflict, between Israel and Islam. The Little Drummer Girl was published in 1983, and filmed a year later with Diane Keaton and Klaus Kinski.

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Berlin Station, More 4 review - spooks in Euroland

Adam Sweeting

It’s eight years since Richard Armitage’s character Lucas North died in Spooks, but now Armitage is back undercover as CIA agent Daniel Miller in Berlin Station. Mind you, it’s already been touch and go – Miller was shot in in Berlin’s Potzdamer Platz in a flash-forward opening sequence, but apparently not fatally.

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