tue 27/05/2025

tv

Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage, Channnel 4 review - making meaning in death

Marina Vaizey

Grayson Perry is at it again. The Turner Prize winner, Reith lecturer, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, curator, writer, British Museum trustee, CBE, RA – plus Britain's and the art world’s favourite transvestite – is trying to find sense in things and events, or, as he has put it, invent meaning in a meaningless world.

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Disenchantment, Netflix review - Matt Groening show has promise after poor start

Owen Richards

It’s an event that only comes around once a generation: a new Matt Groening TV series. The Simpsons is rightly regarded as one of the greatest shows ever made. It changed the face of American television, and 10 years later was followed Futurama, a series that may lack the cross-demographic appeal of its predecessor, but consistently produced satirical masterpieces.

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On the Edge, Channel 4, review - fast and furious new dramas

Jasper Rees

Television drama is living through a golden age, yes, but one thing mainly absent from the vast choice available on terrestrial and streaming broadcasters alike is the short story. Short dramas used to be a regular fixture on television, when schedules were more fluid and pre-satellite channels less risk-averse.

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Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills?, BBC Four review - cold case solved?

Jasper Rees

They don’t make boxers like Freddie Mills any more. A granite lump of grinning charisma, he had a brow and jawline straight from a kids’ cartoon and, despite his humble origins and thuggish contours, a charmingly well-to-do voice. Mills was light heavyweight world champ for a time, then drifted into showbiz and, eventually, running a nightclub in Soho. Then he died in sudden and mysterious circumstances.

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Age Before Beauty, BBC One review - mid-life makeover madness

Adam Sweeting

If you were looking for the antidote to Love Island, this might be just the job.

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Hidden, Series Finale, BBC Four review - a whydunnit, not a whodunnit

Adam Sweeting

Some contend that this Snowdonia-set mystery was a Scandi hommage too far, a mere recycler of gloom-shrouded riffs familiar from the likes of The Bridge or The Killing. Well yes, there was that element to it, but if you stuck with it it grew into far more than a mere copycat procedural.

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The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, ITV review - the ludicrous in search of the preposterous

Adam Sweeting

Belatedly picking up from where series 2 of The Bletchley Circle left off in 2014, this comeback version has a go at transporting a couple of the original characters to the Californian West Coast, where they embroil themselves in the hunt for that old chestnut, a serial killer.

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Who Is America?, Channel 4 review - sudden return of Sacha Baron Cohen

Adam Sweeting

Cunningly kept under wraps until the last moment, Sacha Baron Coen’s new show is a timely reminder of his gift for trampling the boundaries of good taste and decorum.

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Unforgotten, Series 3, ITV review - death on the M1

Adam Sweeting

So it’s back to London’s Bishop Street police station for a third series of screenwriter Chris Lang’s cold case saga.

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Keeping Faith, BBC One review - this summer's watercooler drama

Owen Richards

How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama.

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