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TV preview When it is best to act your age, rather than your shoe size
change was happening. It was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard.”
Also interviewed is Curtis Lundy, who works with the Arc Choir and arranged the song. The most spine tingling moment in the film comes when Lundy and the singers take the track apart and put it together again, so that we can better appreciate how it works.
Rhymefest gave the track to West to work his magic. West, who started out as a producer, was told by just about everyone not to mix rap and religion. Too
controversial, they said, radio would not touch it, particularly if there was swearing in the lyrics.
But West went ahead and mixed them anyway, and the result made awards-winning, mega-selling, rap history, paving the way for other artists who wanted to talk about faith, including Childish Gambino.
As a biography of West the 40-minute programme only scratches the surface of the rapper’s life and is mostly concerned with his early years. Still, fascinating stuff. The second episode, which follows immediately, is on Kendrick Lamar’s Alright.
Between Bradley Walsh and his son in Breaking Dad and now The Chasers’ Road Trip (STV, Thursday 9pm), half of ITV’s onscreen talent, when not making their regular programmes, seem to be travelling the world. For the second in a three part series on intelligence, Shaun Wallace, Anne Hegerty and Mark Labbett, are confined to the UK.
Their subject is that wrinkled chestnut, intelligence: nature or nurture? To answer it, the adults take child geniuses on at quizzing, Scrabble, chess, and a memory test.
The best bit – apart from their reaction when told they will be staying on a campsite for a night – is when the trio take IQ tests, Mark and Shaun for the first time. Most people get between 85 and 115. Anything above 130 and you receive an invitation to join Mensa. Who gets the invite and who doesn’t? You might be surprised.
Narrated by Rob Brydon in that likeably sly fox way of his, The Chasers’ Road Trip is at its most watchable when the three start to talk about themselves. “My father’s IQ was 161 and he was an idiot,” says Anne. Unable to hold down a job or relationship he had “no life coping skills at all”.
As other types of intelligence are explored, including new kid on the block, “EQ”, or emotional intelligence, there are more revelations. You may not learn anything new about nature v nurture in this series, but you will certainly watch The Chase each teatime with a new perspective.
Speaking of Mary Beard, as we were earlier (do keep up at the back), the professor of classics is in fact the host of the arts show
Among her guests this week are the musician Dame Evelyn Glennie and Douglas Stuart, author of Booker Prize winner Shuggie Bain, and the subject is language. Still no sign of that Little Mix discussion, though. That’s a relief.
All Creatures Great and Small (BritBox, from Thu)
Channel 5 recently revived the much-loved tales based on Alf Wight’s books If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn’t Happen To a Vet, written under the more famous pseudonym of James Herriot and based on his experiences as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales during the 1930s and 1940s. The series was both gentle and charming, but not a patch on the original TV adaptation, which began on the BBC in 1978 and ran, one and off, until Christmas 1990. Now all 90 episodes are being made available to stream so, if you watched the revamp, you can contrast and compare the two. Here, Christopher Timothy plays Herriot, memorably supported by Robert Hardy and Peter Davison as eccentric veterinarian Siegfried
Farnon and his mischievous brother Tristan.
River (BritBox, from Thu) Some series go on long after their sell-by date, while others burn brightly for mere seconds before disappearing from view. River falls into the latter category. The six-part drama was created and written by Abi Morgan, whose other notable works include The Hour, The Iron Lady, Shame and Suffragette, and stars Stellan Skarsgard as DI
John River, an unorthodox police officer working for the Met. While suffering from mental health issues, he obsessively hunts for those responsible for the death of his recently murdered colleague Jackie. Meanwhile, River’s boss, Chief Inspector Chrissie Reid, becomes increasingly concerned about his state of mind. Nicola Walker, who has since starred in The Split, which was also by Morgan, and Lesley Manville play the women in River’s increasingly erratic life.
The Dig (Netflix, from Fri)
Historians, fans of true-life drama and those who love homegrown movies should lap up this period drama. It’s based on John Preston’s novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by but reimagines the events surrounding the discovery of Sutton Hoo, the site of two early medieval cemeteries unearthed in Suffolk in 1939. Carey Mulligan stars as Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow with a young won who, following the death of her husband, has become interested in spiritualism. She hires Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), a self-taught local archaeologist to excavate mounds found on the estate bequeathed to her. He eventually unearths incredible long-lost finds; as the Second World War looms, echoes of Britain’s past begin to resonate in its uncertain future. Lily James, Johnny Flynn, Ken Stott and Monica Dolan co-star.
Penguin Bloom (Netflix, from Fri)
Sam Bloom was a happily married Sydney-based nurse and mother-of-three who had travelled extensively and was a regular runner, swimmer, biker and surfer until her life was changed forever. In 2013, during a family holiday in Thailand, she leant against a rotten balcony railing, fell through it and landed six metres below – on concrete. Sam was lucky to be alive, but had suffered devastating injuries that left her paralysed from the waist down. Naomi Watts plays her in this moving biopic which charts how Sam overcame a bout of depression caused by the accident with help from an unlikely source – a wounded baby magpie Penguin.
IN January 2020, the broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill suffered a brain haemorrhage in New York. She spent the next 17 days in a coma. When she came to, she couldn’t move or speak, but could understand what the people around her were saying. A fresh hell in anyone’s book. A year to the day after her collapse, she appeared on Wednesday’s Woman’s Hour speaking to Emma Barnett in her first broadcast interview since her collapse.
It was a joy to hear her. Even though her speech was slow and clearly marked by her ordeal, the fact that she is now able to put words together at all is itself cause for celebration. Because, for a while, there was no guarantee that she would. “I couldn’t really speak at all in sentences for a long time,” Burton-Hill told Barnett. “In the beginning I had no speech. It’s sort of a miracle that I can even have a conversation.”
Even now, she added, “some days I literally have no words.” That would frustrate anybody, never mind someone whose work is effectively talking. Still, here she was doing just that. Burton-Hill has always been one of classical music’s most articulate, enthusiastic proselytisers. And music is still central to her, she said.
But there are times when listening to music can be too painful, too raw. Times when “there was nothing that could be more than this new reality,” she admitted. Hopefully, her new reality will keep improving. It’s good just to hear her speak.
Burns Night with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Radio Scotland, Monday, 8pm.
With guests Eddi Reader and Karen Matheson.
TEDDY JAMIESON
THE GUILTY
Wednesday, Film 4, 9pm
SET entirely in two rooms of a police call-handling centre in Copenhagen, Gustav Moller’s tense and inventive thriller introduces us to Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) as he sits out a boring late shift taking 999 calls from (variously) a man who has been mugged by a sex worker and another who has overdosed on speed and says he needs an ambulance.
Asger is arrogant, terse, dismissive and judgemental.
He’s rude to his colleagues. As he makes and takes other calls Moller unspools his back story and we start to understand why: Asger is in the call-handling centre after being relieved of active duty for some unknown reason. He has a court case relating to it the following day but expects to be back on the street immediately afterwards. So as well as sitting out a late shift he’s enduring a suspension from what he views as proper police work. In a call to another station he winds up talking to his former boss, relishing details of a recent drug bust and being assured that former partner Rashid will hold up in the court hearing.
Everything changes when he takes a call from a woman called Iben (voiced by Jessica Dinnage, from Netflix series The Rain). She calls him ‘Sweetie’ and talks in non sequiturs. He’s puzzled until the krone finally drops: Iben has been kidnapped and is pretending to call home to her daughter. Using call tracing equipment, his police database and GPS information from mobile phone towers,
Asger establishes a location and direction of travel and soon has a police unit in pursuit. He’s also able to contact Iben’s home and talk to her six-year-old daughter Mathilde (Katinka EversJahnsen) and establish that Iben has been snatched by the girl’s estranged father, Michael (Johan Olsen).
What has Asger done to
THE Covid-19 pandemic may have made travelling the planet a bit tricky – but that hasn’t stopped adventurer Simon Reeve from making remarkable television.
Cornwall with Simon Reeve, which aired in November last year, was a fascinating investigation into the future of the county as it emerged from the first UK lockdown.
And now there’s a new, four-part BBC Two series in which the 48-year-old presenter and author takes a look back at some of the most remote destinations he has visited – from Arctic glaciers to tropical reefs – while reflecting on what he has learned from his extraordinary travels.
WHAT WAS REACTION TO CORNWALL WITH SIMON REEVE?
It was slightly overwhelmingly brilliant, to be honest. I think people felt that it painted a more accurate picture of Cornwall than a lot of the programmes that are filmed there.
YOU VIDEO CALL JAHANGIR, WHO YOU MET AS A 10-YEAR-OLD IN BANGLADESH IN 2010...
HOW DO YOU THINK SHARING YOUR STORY WILL HELP PEOPLE?
I think there is merit to people knowing, at a time when we’re a very unequal country, that my background was more ‘normal’ – if you want to put it that way – than most. I managed to leave school with basically no qualifications and went on the dole and was in serious risk of falling into long-term unemployment and welfare dependency, and drugs and everything else that you can get when you’re a slightly lost lad growing up on the edge of inner-city London. And I was lucky!
And what I hope partly, I suppose, is that it helps people to be a little bit more understanding of those who slip off the path, and deserve help and guidance to find their way back on.
ARE PEOPLE SURPRISED TO HEAR YOUR HISTORY?
good addition to the Saturday night schedules. Tonight, Michael invites three more contestants to answer questions for big cash prizes while a spin of the giant wheel decides which of the seven celebs can offer them advice.
SUNDAY
Incredible Journeys with Simon Reeve (BBC2, 8pm)
During a career spanning more than 15 years, broadcaster and writer Simon Reeve has visited over 100 countries on six different continents, experiencing epic landscapes and uncovering moving and dramatic human stories. Now he’ll be revealing behind-thescenes moments and exploring some of the
Blanchett), a kindly witch, hope to locate the demonic timepiece before the end of days.
The Light Between Oceans (2016) (BBC2, 11.35pm)
First World War veteran Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender) accepts a position as a lighthouse keeper on an island called Janus Rock, where he falls in love with local girl Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander). They eventually marry, but the couple’s attempts to conceive end in heartbreak. So when Tom
huge changes he’s witnessed while travelling around the world. In this first episode he focuses on some of the incredible characters he’s met – from the Burmese human-rights campaigner who took him on a dangerous undercover mission in 2010, to the homeless woman he met near Hollywood.
A Perfect Planet (BBC1, 8pm)
Oceans are the largest ecosystem on earth, covering two thirds of our world’s surface and providing half the oxygen in our atmosphere. They’re home to 80 per cent of all life on Earth, and nearly three billion people rely on them for their primary source of food. In the fourth episode of the series, we see how marine life