The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
WHAT TO WATCH
Having been established by Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose as crucibles of faith and fanaticism, virtue and vice, medieval monasteries make ideal settings for murder mysteries. By turns brooding psychological thriller and rollicking adventure yarn, this long-awaited adaptation of CJ Sansom’s bestselling whodunit Dissolution begins with Thomas Cromwell (Sean Bean) dispatching Matthew Shardlake (Arthur Hughes, so arresting in Then Barbara Met
Alan) to a remote abbey where his emissary has been murdered.
Shardlake, a brilliant lawyer with scoliosis, has a two-pronged mission: catch the killer and provide the pretext to close the institution and seize its assets. Hughes and Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) make an engaging odd couple as the perceptive, honourable Shardlake and Jack Barak, Cromwell’s shifty underling who, complete with “distracting codpiece”, is sent to assist or perhaps spy on his companion. A supporting cast including Babou Ceesay (defiant abbot), Paul Kaye (deranged monk) and Peter Firth (the scheming Duke of Norfolk) add plenty of interest. All four episodes are available today. Gabriel Tate the real circumstances around his father’s death are finally, shockingly revealed.
A VERY BRITISH SEX SCANDAL: THE LOVE CHILD & THE SECRETARY Channel 5, 9pm
Positively tame compared to the steady stream of scandals involving Conservative MPs these days, Cecil Parkinson’s long affair with his secretary was political dynamite in its day, blowing up his professional ambitions as he spent years in court trying to block publication of details about their daughter. Private Eye’s Ian Hislop, former MP Edwina
Currie and commentator Matthew Parris are among the well-informed pundits looking back on the whole farrago.
Race Across the World: Isabel and Eugenie