What to watch
Murdered for Love? Samia Shahid
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
Sasha Achilli, a Bafta winner for 2016’s The Truth About Ebola, is back with another hard-hitting documentary, showing as part of the This World strand. This one is an important and alarming exposé of the poisonous relationship between arranged marriages and honour killings in some parts of Pakistani culture. The focus is Samia Shahid, a 28-year-old from Bradford who, the film says, fled an arranged marriage with her first cousin, arranged her divorce under Sharia Law, and then remarried for love. The result was a rift that left her distraught and her family furious. Tempted back to Pakistan for a family emergency, she died a few days later. Her former husband is in prison, awaiting trial for her rape and murder; her father, who was also suspected of involvement in the crime, died last month.
Shahid’s story is effectively told through the words of her friends (performed by actors in a powerful demonstration of the fear with which many of them live), her second husband and her own texts and recordings. It’s a grim and personal portrait of misplaced loyalty, a curdled sense of honour and a woman punished for simply doing what most of us would take for granted. Gabriel Tate