THE HOT LIST
BEST OF TV AND STREAMING
NEW HORROR THE TERROR: INFAMY BBC Two, Friday, May 6, 9pm
■ THE historical horror anthology series returns with another mysterious tale that mixes actual events with supernatural goings on. Season two is based on the experience of Japanese Americans who were interned on the Terminal Island camp in LA during the Second World War. A series of brutal deaths spreads fear among the community with some fearing a mysterious phantom from Japanese folklore could be responsible but US officials ignore the danger under their noses.
CASE REVISITED THE STAIRCASE Sky Atlantic/Now TV from Thursday, May 5
■ NETFLIX series The Staircase proved to be one of the most compelling true crime documentaries of recent years as it followed the trial of Michael Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife Kathleen by pushing her down the stairs in 2001. JeanXavier de Lestrade’s gripping series was full of twists and turns as it put the US judicial system under the microscope and this new dramatisation brings some serious acting talent to the story with Colin Firth as Michael and Toni Collette as Kathleen. The series begins as Michael calls 911 after Kathleen’s fall and then combines recreations of the trial with flashbacks to life before her death to try to uncover what really happened.
NORDIC NOIR BECK BBC Four, Saturday, May 7, 9pm
■ THE Scandi noir spot on Saturday night on BBC Four is restored as Swedish crime drama Beck returns for an eighth season. Martin Beck (Peter Haber) has been promoted to chief detective and is plunged into a gruesome murder case when a man’s body is found in a canal and he’s found to have links to Danish drugs gangs. Feeling the pressure to solve the case in his new role, as Beck delves deep he finds that he and his team are caught between warring criminal gangs. The investigation unfolds over four featurelength episodes on consecutive Saturday nights.
STRANGER THAN FICTION THE SPY WHO DIED TWICE Channel 4, Monday, May 9, 9pm
■ THE details of how a rising star of British politics came to be charged with fraud, was accused of being a spy during the Cold War and faked his own death sounds too far-fetched to be true, but this is the true story of John Stonehouse. Considered a contender for high office when he was included in Harold Wilson’s Labour cabinet in 1964, Stonehouse was a complicated man whose delusions and deceptions eventually caught up with him. Suspected of espionage and falling into financial ruin, he faked his death in Miami in 1974 in order to start a new life but, as this documentary shows, he couldn’t escape his past.
PRICE OF RESISTANCE NAVALNY BBC iPlayer
■ THIS compelling documentary is as scary as it is fascinating as it profiles Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose campaigning for democracy and against corruption in the Kremlin has resulted in him being a target for Putin and his cronies. The documentary revolves around the poisioning of Navalny with nerve agent novichok in 2020, after which he tried to find out who was responsible with the help of an investigative journalist. With relative ease, they uncover the identities of those sent to kill him and track them down, but Navalny remains a marked man - as his current prison term shows.