Awesome AUTUMN TV
Keeley Hawes, Jim Carrey or Sheridan Smith — who will you be watching?
As we are bombarded with trailers for Vanity Fair, ITV’s bigbudget adaptation of Thackeray’s wickedly funny masterpiece, starring Olivia Cooke as scheming Becky sharp, you might wonder if there will be anything else on the box once the nights start getting colder.
The answer is a gratifying ‘yes’ — no end of treats.
some of the most impressive names in movies — Hilary swank, Jim Carrey, Toni Collette and Donald sutherland — join smallscreen superstars including David suchet, John simm, Keeley Hawes, sheridan smith and Vicky McClure in a welter of great dramas.
There are standout comedies and documentaries, too.
so, take a look at what’s ahead and make a date with your favourites . . . STRANGERS ITV, September JOHn sIMM has delivered some stupendous performances over the past few years — first as The Master in disguise on Doctor who and then in the revenge drama Trauma and political thriller Collateral.
Here, he is a London professor whose life disintegrates when his wife is killed in a Hong Kong car crash. He must identify the body, then unravel a web of conspiracy surrounding her death.
emilia Fox is the British consul who becomes mixed up in his investigations.
set against the neon backdrop of one of the world’s most crowded cities, it promises to be as dazzling as it is confusing. BODYGUARD BBC1, end of August sTar richard Madden posted on Inst agra ma picture of his bloodstained script ... intriguing! Line Of Duty creator Jed Mercurio is reunited with actress Keeley Hawes in this whitehall thriller, in which Hawes plays an ambitious Home secretary whose bodyguard (Madden) realises his own political views are utterly opposed to hers.
should he be prepared to take a bullet for her when sometimes he dreams of shooting her? ‘I don’t need you to vote for me — only protect me,’ she snaps at him. DOCTOR WHO BBC1, September BrOaDCHurCH creator Chris Chibnall takes over the show’s helm and Jodie whittaker is the first female Doctor.
The Time Lord’s gender isn’t the only change: Chibnall has hinted there won’t be Daleks or other traditional alien foes such as Cybermen. There are three new companions, including quiz host Bradley walsh. It all threatens to be unrecognisably different. PRESS BBC1, September FrOM the pen of Doctor Foster creator Mike Bartlett, this series has David suchet brilliantly cast as a global newspaper baron and owner of a British tabloid called The Post. Ben Chaplin — the wicked seducer in apple Tree Yard — is his editor, while Priyanga Burford is the editor of the rival Herald newspaper.
Crisscrossing storylines follow love lives, grudges and skulduggery among staff, both in and out of the office.
Bartlett insists that he was motivated by ‘a genuine desire to explore what [journalists] do, why it is important, how they do it and how it affects them personally. It’s an exploration, not an attack’. Bet he takes a swipe at TV critics, though. A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES Sky One, September a BIT like Harry Potter with added romance, this eightpart series stars australian actress Teresa Palmer as Diana, a gifted, but unschooled, witch at Oxford university who uncovers an arcane book of magic that all the world’s vampires, demons and wizards have been seeking for centuries. That attracts the attention of bloodsucker Matthew Goode, who promptly falls in love with her.
Hokum it may be, but the trilogy of books on which it is based has legions of fans. author Deborah
Harkness, an academic, crams lashings of detail into the stories. MARGARET BBC2, Autumn As tHe 40th anniversary of Margaret thatcher’s arrival in Downing street approaches, this documentary series analyses how a grocer’s daughter from Grantham in Lincolnshire took on the might of the unions and dragged Britain out of an economic malaise that threatened to wipe out the nation’s industries.
It also asks why, so many years later, she still tops polls both of the country’s most admired and most disliked leaders. the programme is not to be confused with a two-part BBC2 study next month of that other Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, which promises to include an interview with the owner of her favourite bar on the Caribbean island of Mustique. Never were two Margarets less alike. CLEANING UP ITV, October Mrs Mop takes on the bankers as, in the world of high finance, nobody notices sheridan smith — playing an office cleaner called sam — vacuuming the carpet tiles of an office block in London’s banking district. sam has a secret of her own: she is addicted to online gambling. When she overhears two businessmen discussing an illegal deal that could net them millions, sam starts to plot a way out of debt . . . and, armed only with a basic guide to the stock market and a sheaf of stolen information, takes on the brokers at their own game. TRUST BBC2, September IN 1973, gangsters kidnapped John paul Getty III, heir to one of the biggest fortunes in the world. the violence and bungles that followed sent a shiver around the planet. Donald sutherland plays the young man’s stubborn tycoon grandfather, reluctant to deal with the kidnappers, despite his oilfields and priceless art collection. With the victim’s father in a druggy stupor, it is left to mother Hilary swank to try to bring him home. KIDDING Sky Atlantic, September tHIs is the first full tV series Jim Carrey has done since the Nineties. He plays puppeteer Mr pickles (pictured right), beloved by millions of children and a national treasure, but offscreen, a misery guts whose life is falling apart.
His puppets try to help him, but when your eyes are made from pingpong balls, there’s only so much you can do. the sitcom reunites Carrey with director Michel Gondry, who helmed one of the comic’s most acclaimed movies, eternal sunshine of the spotless Mind. I’M A CELEBRITY . . . GET ME OUT OF HERE! ITV, November tHe perfect reality show formula may be about to change as, with its willing idiots, patch of welltrodden jungle and several million creepy-crawlies, the annual festival of bullying and torment that has been running since 2002 is expected to be the first without co-presenter Ant Mcpartlin. He is still in recovery after his drink-drive shame and messy marital break-up — and now, rumours suggest his tV partner Declan Donnelly, whose first baby is due this year, may also give the Jungle a miss this time. so, who will be tipping earwigs over the D-listers and serving them platters of kangaroo goolies?