PICK OF PAY TV AND MOVIES

NETFLIX NEW!

THE WITCHER

(Season 1) ★★★ Out of all the shows looking to be the

‘next Game Of Thrones’, Netflix’s dark and multistranded fantasy drama feels the most similar. At its centre is Henry Cavill as ‘The Witcher’, a dour and powerful mutant who roams a medieval-style land like a mercenary. His powers may be dwarfed, though, by two unsuspecting women elsewhere in the realm, whose strengths are slowly revealed to them during this graphic mix of action and scheming. From Friday.

NEW!

SOUNDTRACK

(Season 1) ★★★ Christina Milian and Madeleine Stowe star in a heady US musical drama about the lives of struggling artists as they love and lose in LA. From Wednesday.

MOVIE

THE TWO POPES

(2019) 12 ◆ ★★★★

This acting masterclass from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce (right) imagines a chat between conservative Pope Benedict XVI (Hopkins) and liberal future Pope Francis (Pryce). From Friday.

LAST CHANCE

MERLIN

(All five seasons) ★★★ Fun BBC drama with Colin Morgan as the young wizard and Richard Wilson as his mentor. Until tomorrow.

AMAZON PRIME DRAMA

GLEE

(All six seasons) ★★★ The high-school musical was a phenomenon in its early years, brimming with inventive musical mash-ups and the snide put-downs of the cheerleading coach.

DRAMA

NCIS

(Seasons 1-14) ★★★

Mark Harmon stars as the dauntless Gibbs, leader of a Washington Dc-based team who find dead sailors in the strangest of places in this US drama. David Mccallum co-stars as his quirky medical examiner in a show that remains one of the most reliable of its kind.

DRAMA

HOMECOMING

(Season 1) ★★★★ Julia Roberts adds the star power to Amazon’s psychological thriller, as a therapist at a secret government facility for rehabilitating soldiers where not everything is as it seems. The resulting ten-part story is a stylish and slow-burning affair that Sam Esmail (Mr Robot) adapted from the (free) podcast of the same name.

MOVIE

HORRIBLE HISTORIES: THE MOVIE – ROTTEN ROMANS

(2019) PG ● ★★★ This cinematic outing for the CBBC comedy packs a lot of fun into its story of Boudicca (singer and Glow star Kate Nash) taking on the Romans. From Wednesday.

SKY ON DEMAND/ NOW TV DRAMA

FUNGUS THE BOGEYMAN (All three parts) ★★★★ A strong cast (Timothy Spall, Joanna

Scanlan, Victoria Wood,

Keeley Hawes) brings

Raymond Briggs’s amusingly disgusting book to life for

Sky’s family special, which was first shown at Christmas in 2015. Some painstaking special effects do a lot to help those performances.

DRAMA

TREASURE ISLAND (Both parts) ★★★ Sky’s starry take on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, in which Eddie Izzard plays Long John Silver.

DRAMA

THE STRAIN

(All four seasons) ★★★ Season two of this vampire drama finishes on Wednesday on Paramount and, if you want to jump ahead, Sky and Now TV have the concluding two seasons.

MOVIE

FREAKY FRIDAY

(2003) PG ● ★★★ Sky has both this and the 1976 original of the body-swap comedy, but the latter leaves rather more to explain to a young audience – the smoking, for a start. Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis play the daughter and mum switching places.

BEST OF THE REST NEW!

SHRILL

(BBC3 via iplayer) ★★★ Overweight journalist Annie is underappreciated in all areas of her life, and wants to change things up without changing her weight. Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant (left) plays her well in a sharp, nicely observed US comedy with a good heart. From tomorrow, 10am.

DOCUMENTARY

THE EDGE OF SCIENCE

(Youtube) ★★★ Hands-on science documentary with presenter Rick Edwards, which culminates in the testing of a levitating hoverboard.

PAY MOVIES

ANGEL HAS FALLEN

(2019) 15 ◆ (BT TV Store, Sky Store, Virgin) ★★★ The third of the …Has Fallen films is probably the second best of the series. Gerard Butler returns as embattled Secret Service agent Mike Banning, who is framed for an assassination attempt on the US President. DIRTY GOD

(2019) 15 ◆ (BT TV Store,

Sky Store, Virgin) ★★★★★ Powerful London drama about the recovery of a woman burned by acid, played with astonishing power by real-life burns survivor Vicky Knight. Both from Monday.