The very best of the week ahead Friday
Sunday
The War of the Worlds
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Orson Welles, Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg… HG Wells’s ageless science-fiction allegory has survived a great many adaptations of wildly varying quality. This latest, longdelayed version from Jonathan
Strange and Mr Norrell’s Peter Harness may well be destined to languish nearer the bottom of the pile due to some problematic CGI, and a slightly flat and underpowered atmosphere, but it still has a fair amount to recommend it. Chief among its virtues is Eleanor Tomlinson, effervescent as Amy, the lover of married journalist George (Rafe Spall) but, in a welcome update of the Wells formula, a rounded and prominent character in her own right. Robert Carlyle is sound too as astronomer Ogilvy, one of the few in Edwardian society to forgive their transgression and the man who spots strange activity on Mars. Sure enough, a mystery sphere crash-lands in Woking, and things take a dark turn. Some intriguing timeline manipulation holds out enough reason to tune in next week, but it still feels like a strangely muted treatment of a story that should be ripe with drama.
Gabriel Tate
The Crown
NETFLIX, FROM TODAY
They’ve changed the guard at Buckingham Palace, with Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies leading the wholesale cast changes and replacing Claire Foy and Matt Smith as Elizabeth and Philip. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, with Peter Morgan’s scripts neatly juxtaposing broad events with intimate family tensions in the years of 1964 to 1976, including Aberfan, the Cambridge Spies affair and Prince Charles’s relationship with Camilla Shand. Fine performances, lavish cinematography and shards of wit make this another series to treasure. GT
Monday
Cold Call
CHANNEL 5, 9.00PM
Spread across four nights this week (Mon-Thurs), this engaging new thriller stars Sally Lindsay as June, e, a struggling care-worker who falls victim to a particularly nasty phone fraud when the proceeds of her house sale are stolen by a gang pretending to be her bank’s security department – leaving her penniless. Fortunately (or maybe not) an old friend (Daniel Ryan) who also got stung turns out to be a fraud vigilante, and they decide to go after the culprits together. What follows is gripping, if not always entirely credible in the detail. June’s efforts to get into contact with the baddies, for example, are rather too easily achieved. (That they operate out of her hometown is a mite convenient). Even so, Lindsay is remarkably sympathetic in the lead role, and her situation, rooted as it is in a fear of faceless fraudsters that will be familiar to all too many viewers, lends the drama powerful elements of both ordinariness and compulsion – and a strong desire to follow June’s story through to the end. Gerard O’Donovan
Vienna Blood
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
The first of three adaptations of Frank Tallis’s popular crime novels based in belle époque Vienna of the 1890s stars Matthew Beard as Max, a brilliant student of Freud, who takes up crime-solving with local cop DI Rheinhardt (Jürgen Maurer). Tonight’s opulently produced but stodgy opener offers a new twist on a classic lockedroom mystery. GO
Tuesday
Johnson v Corbyn: The ITV Debate
ITV, 8.00PM
The increasing Americanisation of our politics means that a new general election campaign equals a new round of television debates. Early controversy has seen Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson launching legal action over being cut out. At the moment, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to face his opposition counterpart, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. But while Corbyn can be very effective on the stump and in Town Hall meetings with the faithful, his Prime Ministers’
Questions appearances suggest that he’s less than convincing when having to think on his feet. Similarly Johnson’s “I’m doing this on the fly at the last minute” shtick can come across as ill-prepared to the floating voters both sides desperately need. Sarah Hughes
Greg Davies: Looking for Kes
BBC FOUR, 9.00PM
This excellent documentary fronted by actor and comedian Greg Davies explores Barry Hines’s 1968 novel,
A Kestrel for a Knave. There are revealing interviews with Hines’s brother and celebrity fans such as Jarvis Cocker, plus lovely background details on Ken Loach’s celebrated film.
It’s followed by Kes: Reimagined, which retells Loach’s film with puppetry and dance. SH
Wednesday
Boeing’s Killer Plane: What Went Wrong?
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
When it first launched, the Boeing 737 Max airliner was hailed as a game changer for the industry. It carried the promise of flying further and with far greater efficiency than previous 737s, while also offering a quieter ride for its passengers and a new anti-stall system to ensure their safety. It proved to be a smash hit, quickly accruing 5,000 orders and generating billions for Boeing. All of this, however, changed in October 2018 when one such model, Lion Air Flight 610, crashed soon after taking off from Jakarta, killing everyone on board. Unthinkably, only five months later, a second 737 Max, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, suffered a similar fate, killing a further 157 people. With all 737 Max aircraft now grounded worldwide, this sobering documentary explores the backstory to these catastrophes to see whether they could have been avoided. Toby Dantzic
Guilt
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
Brilliant performances and a sharp script anchor this Scottish thriller, which ends tonight. Max (Mark Bonnar) comes clean with Jake (Jamie Sives) about his role in the moneylaundering operation, while the police question Angie (Ruth Bradley). TD
Thursday What Makes a Murderer
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
“What we’re looking for is how biological factors stack up with psychological and social factors to create a toxic mix,” says Adrian Raine, a neuroscientist who’s been studying the brains of criminals for 40 years. In this fascinating new series, Raine and forensic psychologist Vicky Thakordas-Desai take a trio of convicted murderers and explore whether something in these men may have somehow predisposed them to commit the terrible crimes for which they were ultimately brought to justice. Their subject in this opener is 71-year-old John Massey, recently released after serving 42 years in prison – his sentence was extended following each of three escape attempts – for shooting a bouncer in 1975 after a nightclub brawl. Massey is as keen as they are to see if they can get to the root of his offending. It makes for an engrossing hour. GO
How to Stop Your Nuisance Calls
CHANNEL 5, 8.00PM
Airing in conjunction with Channel 5’s phone-fraud thriller Cold Call, this eye-opening film investigates nuisance and scam calls – a staggering 3.9billion were made last year in the UK – with practical tips about how to prevent them ever getting through to you. GO
Country Music by Ken Burns
BBC FOUR, 9.30PM AND 10.20PM
“Lovin’, cheatin’, hurtin’, fightin’, pickup trucks and mother.” The late guitarist Harold Bradley’s description of country music may not be entirely comprehensive, but it covers the main bases. The same could be said of Ken Burns’s latest sprawling survey of a defining American musical genre, following his expansive but still controversial 2001 series on jazz. As with many of Burns’s epic series, it’s low on genuine thrills and pyrotechnics, but high on diligent research, superb archive and familiar interviewees. Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard number among the latter in this opening double bill, which goes deep into the American South to locate the origins of country music. The 2019 Country Music Awards follow right after, at 11.10pm. GT
Question Time Leaders Special
BBC ONE, 7.00PM
Fiona Bruce hosts this special preelection, bumper edition of Question Time from Sheffield featuring the leaders of the parties standing on December 12. The panellists have not yet been confirmed but expect a fiery two hours. GT