Branagh becomes Boris 2 I’M A CELEBRITY... GET ME OUT OF HERE! VIRGIN MEDIA, NOVEMBER
Kenneth studied the PM’s speech and movements and spent hours in make-up to play him in an unflinching new series set during the first brutal wave of Covid
The 20th anniversary of the show marks a return to its Australian jungle home, with Ant and Dec (above) hosting as usual and 12 fresh celebs. Among the names in the frame are Richard Madeley, who left the Welsh camp early last year, and Danny Dyer.
3
BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT: MAGIC SPECIAL
UTV, COMING SOON This one-off special will showcase the best magicians to have appeared on BGT, such as semifinalist Marc Spelmann and former winner Richard Jones, with a magical prize of £50,000 up for grabs for the act voted the finest of them all.
4
BBC 100
ACROSS THE
BBC, OCTOBER
A comedy special featuring Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield, an irreverent look at the BBC’s history by the Horrible Histories team, and special episodes of Strictly, Top Gear and Antiques Roadshow are all promised as part of the BBC’s celebration of its 100th birthday next month.
5
RIDDICULOUS UTV, OCTOBER
Ranvir Singh fronts this series that mixes general knowledge with an ability to solve fiendish riddles. The more brain-bending teasers the teams solve, the more money they bank.
6
CHALLENGE ANNEKA
CHANNEL 5, COMING SOON
This four-part series is a reboot of the show which ran on BBC1 between 1989 and 1995, and saw Anneka Rice persuade big brands and volunteers to help with projects such as building children’s playgrounds and providing a pool for orphaned seals. The new series will stick to the original format, with Anneka once more travelling around in a lorry and a beach buggy as she co-ordinates the
projects.
7
THE MASKED SINGER – I’M A CELEBRITY SPECIAL
VIRGIN MEDIA, COMING SOON
The return of I’m A Celebrity to Australia is mashed-up with another hit. In this one-off special,
masked celebrities will be wearing costumes commemorating the best of Australia and I’m A Celeb — from kangaroos to grubs and snakes — and the usual panel will be joined by some special guests paying homage.
8
THE TRAITORS
BBC1, COMING SOON This whodunnit game show is hosted by Claudia Winkleman and is filmed in a castle in the Scottish Highlands. Players must work together to complete physical and mental challenges and win a cash prize, but at the start some of them are secretly selected to be ‘Traitors’ and will murder their team-mates.
9
THIS ENGLAND SKY ATLANTIC, 28 SEPTEMBER
Kenneth Branagh admits that when he was asked to play Boris Johnson in a drama about the brutal first wave of the Covid virus while we were still dealing with the second, he thought it was too soon. But then he read the script, and realised the show needed to be made immediately while the memories were still fresh.
This England, a fast-paced sixpart series looking at Covid from every angle — from China,
SAGE and vaccine scientists to healthcare workers and those in Downing Street and care homes — is the result. ‘What I was drawn to was seeing so many different strata of society side by side, and how authentically the writers had researched it,’ says Oscar-winner Kenneth.
‘It’s a chronicle of life at a moment of crisis. It seemed to me it was important to try to capture something while it was still almost white hot.’
The series, which mixes real footage with dramatisation, starts with Boris Johnson still an ambitious MP, and whizzes through Brexit rows and his 2019 general election win. Then we see Boris’s pregnant girlfriend Carrie Symonds (Ophelia Lovibond, right with Branagh as Boris) throwing up in the toilet at 10 Downing Street as reports of a strange virus in China start to emerge, before the frantic behindthe-scenes discussions about what to do when it becomes clear how dangerous the virus is once it arrives.
The series is written and directed by Michael Winterbottom, but he insists it’s not driven by political motives. ‘Boris is just one strand that runs through it — it’s a mosaic of lots of different stories,’ he says. ‘If you think about what was happening in early March 2020, eight days later it was a totally different situation, so we’ve tried
10
THE HOUSE ACROSS
THE STREET
CHANNEL 5, NOVEMBER
Harry Potter and Happy Valley star Shirley Henderson turns in a disturbing performance as lonely single mother Claudia, a woman fixated on the disappearance of young child Emily Winter. As Emily’s parents agonise over her fate and continue their public campaign to find their daughter, Claudia lurks in the shadows, refusing to reveal what she may or may not know about the girl’s to keep that pace.’
The drama ends in May 2020, and takes in controversies such as Dominic Cummings’s visit to Barnard Castle, hospital patients being sent back to care homes without being tested and the desperate search for PPE equipment. It’ll also show the PM’s own battle with
Covid, which nearly killed him. Kenneth studied Boris’s mannerisms to get his portrayal just right. ‘He leads with his shoulders, head down,’ says Ken. ‘That physicality, the walk, was something that came early on. He has a slight hunch to the shoulders, a sense of somebody taking things on. There’s also a rhythmic element to his speech, the galvanising in short, cheerleading phrases.’ It took three hours a day in make-up to give Ken Boris’s look. ‘One prosthetic was like a balaclava of a neckpiece, and a lot of the time was spent making sure the prosthetic skin blended into my own. Then we had to pull down the eyelids to have the slight slope that’s a Johnson family trait, and there was obviously a hairpiece to wear. I have very thin lips and Boris has quite a big upper lip, so I had a new one of those.’
11
SOMEWHERE BOY CHANNEL 4, OCTOBER
This tells the story of 18-year-old Danny, who’s spent all his life in an isolated house, convinced by his dad that the outside world is ‘full of monsters’ after a breakdown following his wife’s death. But when the police arrive one day, Danny (Lewis Gribben, right) tries to find out who killed his mother.
12
TULSA KING PARAMOUNT+, 14 NOVEMBER
This is a real coup for Paramount+, Sylvester Stallone playing the lead in a TV series. After more than 40 years making movies, Sly says he was blown away by a script in which he plays a former New York gangster (right) trying to rebuild his career after 25 years in jail. Exiled by his boss to Oklahoma to set up a criminal network, he faces challenges both tragic and comic.
13 RALPH AND KATIE BBC1, OCTOBER
A six-part spin-off from the acclaimed BBC1 drama The A Word about a family dealing with an autistic child, this is the continuing story of Ralph and Katie Wilson (Leon Harrop and Sarah Gordy), newlyweds who also have Down Syndrome. Each of the six episodes looks at a fresh domestic challenge facing the couple, and writer Peter Bowker says, ‘It’s a natural step forwards from The A Word to increase representation and diversity both on and off screen. The scripts are full of joy, humour and authenticity.’
14 I AM... CHANNEL 4, COMING SOON
This brilliant anthology series has already allowed stars such as Suranne Jones, Lesley Manville, Vicky McClure and Samantha Morton to explore personal issues through fictional stories, and next it’s the turn of Oscar winner Kate Winslet. She agreed to star in a feature-length special to open the third series of dramas written by Dominic Savage. Each episode is developed in partnership with the lead actors,
15 RICHES UTV, COMING SOON
Billed as a black British version of Succession, this certainly has all the ingredients — extreme wealth, a dysfunctional family and a battle over who’ll succeed ailing patriarch Stephen Richards in his cosmetics business. But the six-part series is also about what happens when a man’s first and second families (including Stephen’s current wife Claudia, played by Sarah Niles, above) collide.
16 THE PACT BBC1, COMING SOON
A second series for a hit drama that aired last year on BBC1, although this one has a totally different cast and storyline. Series one saw workers at a Welsh beer factory trying to cover up the death of their boss. This new story is family-based, as siblings make a pact to counter the threat posed by a stranger who arrives in town claiming a dangerous connection to them that nobody could have imagined. and uses semiimprovised dialogue. Kate will be starring with her daughter Mia Threapleton (above), so the show is likely to be something of an insight into their family dynamics.
17 BEFORE WE DIE CHANNEL 4, COMING SOON
This crime thriller took inspiration from a Swedish TV drama for its first series, but plots its own course in this second season. Detective Hannah Laing (Lesley Sharp), who fought to protect her wayward son from a crime syndicate, is now moving towards the source of her problems by confronting the head of the organisation.
18 LUCY INVESTIGATES VIRGIN MEDIA ONE FROM OCTOBER 10
Lucy Kennedy tackles the inner circle of some of the country’s most fascinating subcultures as she immerses herself into lifestyles of four fascinating factions of Irish society, exploring everything from sex in the suburbs to life online.
19 FUNNY WOMAN SKY MAX, OCTOBER
Based on the hit novel Funny Girl by Nick Hornby, this charming, witty series is steeped in nostalgia. Set in 1964, it stars former Bond Girl Gemma Arterton as Barbara Parker (left), a Blackpool beauty queen who not only wants a taste of Swinging London but is also determined to become the UK’s answer to Lucille Ball by breaking into the male-dominated world of comedy.
The six-episode series, co-written by comedian Morwenna Banks, takes in the seismic culture changes of the 60s and doesn’t shy away from unsavoury elements like the casting couch.
The show begins with Barbara winning Miss Blackpool and heading for London. While working in a department store she meets a theatrical agent (Rupert Everett) who gets her an audition for a BBC sitcom pilot about a pair of newlyweds. In the mid-60s the rules of the sitcom were being rewritten, and this series is partly inspired by Galton and Simpson who wrote Steptoe & Son. ‘In the 50s not many people had TVs, but in the 60s suddenly everyone had one,’ says Nick. ‘There were all these clever people doing good things in TV, and there were only two channels. No one watched BBC2, so if you won a slot on BBC1 you had everyone watching.’
20 INSIDE MAN
BBC1, COMING SOON Sherlock creator Steven Moffat is a master of redefining genres, and this is a whodunnit with a twist. ‘It’s more like a “who’ll do it?”,’ he says of this intriguing four-part thriller. It stars David Tennant as a smalltown vicar, Dolly Wells as a maths teacher trapped in a cellar, Lydia West as an investigative journalist and Stanley Tucci (above, centre) as a convicted murderer. The fun is in finding out how they’re connected.
21 MAXINE CHANNEL 5, COMING SOON
This three-part true-crime drama looks at the shocking double murder of ten-yearold schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 in Soham, Cambridgeshire. It focuses on school assistant Maxine Carr, her tumultuous relationship with killer caretaker Ian Huntley, why she helped him cover up the murders, and the media frenzy surrounding the biggest manhunt in British history. Newcomer Jemma Carlton (above) takes the lead role.
22
HAPPY VALLEY BBC1, COMING SOON
This chilling crime drama set in West Yorkshire’s scenic but drug-ravaged Calder Valley made a star of James Norton as vicious murderer Tommy Lee
Royce, and won plaudits for Sarah Lancashire, his policewoman nemesis Catherine Cawood (above), when the show began in 2014. This is the final instalment in the trilogy with Sergeant Cawood contemplating retirement. But an investigation into a gangland murder unwittingly leads her back to Tommy, while over the six-part series we will also see her grandson Ryan wanting to know more about his father, the criminal who raped Catherine’s daughter.
23
CROSSFIRE
BBC1, COMING SOON Imagine relaxing in a beautiful Canary Island resort, sipping a drink, kids playing in the pool, the distant sounds of a water aerobics class going on... and then gunmen burst in and start shooting people one by one. That’s what Louise Doughty, creator of novelturned-BBC-drama Apple Tree Yard, did, and the result is an adrenalinfuelled, edge-of-the-seat three-part thriller called Crossfire that asks questions of us all.
‘I was on holiday with my family in one of those resort hotels which is quite enclosed,’ recalls Louise. ‘I was on a sun lounger and my family were all in different places, and I had this thought, “What if a gunman came in at this particular moment?” You’re very vulnerable in that situation. Who would you try and save? Would you help the people around you, or would you hide under the lounger?’
Starring Keeley Hawes (above), who acts as a producer as well as lead star, the drama will make you ask yourself how you would cope in that situation. Keeley plays Jo, who’s on holiday with two other couples and their children, and there’s already drama in the dynamics of the group. Jo and her husband Jason (Lee Ingleby) are having problems, while her friends Miriam (Josette Simon) and Abhi (Anneika Rose) can only watch on awkwardly.
The story is told in real time with both flashbacks and flashforwards as
we watch events in the lead up to the attack, and all the little things that seemed significant at the time, before the dreadful aftermath of the life-changing incident.
‘It was important for me to see what happens when the survivors come home,’ says Louise. ‘I wanted to honour the fact that these kinds of experiences do happen to real people whose lives have been leading up to them, and they have very different lives afterwards. People who have been through horrific experiences like this can find themselves in the supermarket the following week buying milk.
How do you bring together those two extremes?’
Keeley loved playing a role that plunged her straight into the action, as Jo is a former policewoman. ‘It still feels like a novelty to have a 46-year-old woman playing a part like this,’ she says. ‘It’s the first actiondrama I’ve been in where I’m not playing a passive role. Also, this character isn’t very likeable, but she goes through a brilliant arc which was quite a journey to take.’
The production was filmed in a Tenerife resort where the cast also stayed, Keeley even had the same room as her character.
But it was still open to tourists. ‘They seem to have told some guests about the filming but not others,’ says Josette.
‘So there were a whole lot of tourists left wondering why so many people were coming into the hotel screaming and covered in blood. There were strange goings-on in the corridors and at the buffet while special forces types were marching around. And these poor people were just trying to have a holiday!’
Nicole Lampert
24 WITHOUT SIN UTV, NOVEMBER
Line Of Duty’s Vicky McClure must have had enough of Johnny Harris. He played her abusive father in This Is England, and here he’s cast as Charles Stone, the man convicted of murdering her character Stella Tomlinson’s 14-year-old daughter Maisy. This powerful four-part thriller sees Stella (right) trying to move on in her life, when Stone says he wants to atone for what he did. But face-to-face with her daughter’s killer, nothing can prepare Stella for what Stone has to say next.
25 SHANTARAM
APPLE TV+, 14 OCTOBER This eagerly anticipated adaptation of the best-selling novel by Gregory David Roberts is a love story with a difference. Sons Of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam (right) plays a fugitive called Lin Ford who’s hoping to get lost in vibrant and chaotic 1980s Bombay. But when he falls for an enigmatic beauty named Karla, he’s forced to make some difficult choices and the tension mounts thrillingly over 12 episodes.
26 THE OLD MAN DISNEY+, 28 SEPTEMBER
Cheating death is the name of the game for disgraced CIA agent Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges, above) in this fast-paced seven-part thriller. He’s on the run to avoid assassination by his former employers, and Hollywood veteran Bridges has some real-life experience of narrowly escaping death. The 72-year-old fell critically ill with Covid at the same time as he was receiving chemotherapy for lymphoma in 2020, and was only well enough to complete the role of Chase two years after he filmed his first scene.
27 KIN RTE ONE, COMING SOON
The Kinsella clan make an eagerly anticipated return for a second series of the internationally acclaimed Kin starring Claire Dunne, Aidan Gillen, and Charlie Cox (above), with production currently underway in Dublin. The new season will see the Kinsellas as top dogs in Dublin — but killing Eamon Cunningham has created as many problems as it solved.
28 LITVINENKO VIRGIN MEDIA ONE, COMING SOON
Nearly 16 years after his murder, the poisoning of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 remains one of the most shocking political assassinations. And after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, this new fourpart drama, starring David Tennant as the former spy, couldn’t be more timely. Litvinenko, a prominent Putin critic, fell ill on 1 November 2006 after taking tea with two former Russian agents at the Millennium Hotel in London. He was admitted to University College Hospital, and the drama starts with two police officers interviewing him there after he claimed he’d been poisoned on the direct orders of Putin. Litvinenko knew where he’d been poisoned and who’d done it, but doctors and detectives faced a race against time to discover what he’d been poisoned with. The series then follows the tireless fight of his wife Marina (Margarita
Levieva) to publicly name her husband’s killers and have the role of the Russian state acknowledged in his murder. As well as working with Marina, the show has been produced with the help of some of those involved in the investigation, including Scotland Yard officers Clive Timmons and Brent Hyatt (played by Mark Bonnar and Neil Maskell).
29 MURDER, THEY HOPE GOLD, COMING SOON
Terry and Gemma (Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson, above) return as the former coach tour hosts and lovers turned private detectives, who have so far solved a bloody trail of Agatha Christie-influenced murders that seemed to drop in their laps wherever they travelled. The second full series of this laughout-loud comedy sees the pair facing a new batch of baffling crimes over three hour-long episodes. Watch out for guest stars such as Sandi Toksvig, Vicki Pepperdine, Sally Phillips and Hugh Dennis joining them, with the promise of a wedding, couples therapy and a very aristocratic mystery to solve.
30 THE CHANGE CHANNEL 4, COMING SOON
‘Shirley Valentine meets Deliverance. With pigs.’ That’s the intriguing description of this show about the menopause, written by and starring comic Bridget Christie. Grateful that she hasn’t got early onset dementia when she forgets what the word for a shoe is, 50year-old Linda realises it’s just the menopause and vows to make a change in her own life. Frustrated with lazy husband Steve (Omid Djalili), she dusts off her old motorbike and heads to the Forest of Dean where she meets a cast of bizarre characters including the Pig Man (Jerome Flynn), a recluse who lives a solitary life with only a wild boar for company.
31 THE BEAR DISNEY+, 5 OCTOBER
However adrenaline-filled your day, a half-hour episode of The Bear will top it. The eight-part story follows young
chef Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto (right), who returns home to Chicago from the world of fine dining to run his family restaurant after the tragic suicide of his brother.
Set in a kitchen, it focuses on the people trying to create wonderful food while dealing with grief, stress and deadlines. Relentless and dark, it’s already been a huge hit in America.
A MARRIAGE THAT’S LIKE A CRIME SCENE 32 MAMMALS AMAZON, COMING SOON
This is James Corden’s first major job since announcing he was leaving The Late Late Show, a ‘relationship comedy’ written by Jez Butterworth, best known for hit play Jerusalem and Bond film Spectre. But the plot is shrouded in mystery. ‘Everything that happens after the first six minutes is a spoiler,’ says Jez.
‘I’d love to be able to reveal more, but if I did I’d ruin the series. It’s a relationship comedy that doesn’t really discuss relationships. It’s more like a whodunnit. I think most relationships do end up as crime scenes, don’t they? ‘A good marriage is the most magical thing,’ he adds cryptically. ‘In a world of eight billion you’ve found the one who gets you. You’re also never going to have sex with anyone else, ever, and then you’re going to die, and be dead forever.’ Corden (right), who found success on Gavin & Stacey, is one of the producers and his co-stars include Oscarnominated actress
Sally Hawkins (left) and Belfast star Colin Morgan. Nicole Lampert
33 CUNK EARTHON BBC2, MONDAYS
Dim-witted interviewer Philomena Cunk is perhaps Diane Morgan’s most famous comic character. Her unfiltered questions have unnerved many experts over the years, and now she’s back in this spoof series investigating the origins to some of man’s greatest inventions. Hugh Grant and Lisa Kudrow are among those playing fictitious experts who struggle to get a word in edgeways. wedding changes everything. But if you take away her vices, do you also take away her personality?
34 WRECK BBC3, OCTOBER
You expect fine dining and possibly a game of quoits on a cruise, not mass murder. This entertaining six-part comedy-horror follows Jamie (Ladhood’s Oscar Kennedy), who wants to find out what happened to his sister after she went missing aboard The Sacramentum. Also, why do the crew (including Rosie, played by Miya Ocego, left) appear to be oblivious to the deaths?
35 ROSIE MOLLOY GIVES UP EVERYTHING SKY COMEDY, COMING SOON
Rosie Molloy (Sheridan Smith) uses life’s vices to cope with her job as a partner in an accountancy firm. It’s led to a life of self-destruction, until an incident at her brother’s
36 FAITHLESS VIRGIN MEDIA ONE, COMING SOON
Co-written by and starring Baz Ashmawy, this new comedic and tantalisingly honest drama series follows Irish-Egyptian dad, Sam, who is presented with the life altering responsibility of raising his three young daughters alone. That is until his irresponsible but irresistible younger brother moves in to ‘help’— and never leaves!
Diana... and some very dangerous liaisons 37 THE CROWN NETFLIX, NOVEMBER
It’s all change cast-wise for the royal drama’s fifth and penultimate series, with Imelda Staunton stepping into Claire Foy and Olivia Colman’s shoes as the Queen, Jonathan Pryce cast as Prince Philip, Dominic West as Prince Charles (with his son Senan playing Prince William) and Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki in the role of Princess Diana (right).
This series will cover the 1990s, including the year the Queen called her ‘annus horribilis’, 1992, when three of her children’s marriages collapsed and fire nearly destroyed Windsor Castle. This was the year when the dysfunctionality at the heart of the family became clear to everyone. The toe-sucking scandal involving Fergie (Emma Laird Craig) put her marriage to Prince Andrew (James Murray) onto the front pages, and we’ll see Diana cheat on Charles as Andrew Morton’s book Diana, Her True Story was released and the Wales’s marriage spiralled towards its end.
As ever, the stories will focus not only on problems within the family but also the political and social upheaval both in Britain and across the world. One episode will centre on the ending of the Cold War, symbolised by the Queen’s first (and only) state visit to Russia, where many of her aristocratic relatives were murdered.
While stories about the royals continue to fascinate, The Crown’s creator Peter Morgan insists the sixth series will be the last. ‘I have in my head a 20-year rule,’ he says. ‘That’s enough time and distance to really understand something, to understand its role, its position, its relevance.’ So we won’t get his take on Meghan Markle then...
38 SAS: ROGUE HEROES BBC1, COMING SOON
They described themselves as a band of oddities, a varied mix of gentlemen and pirates, but what they had in common was a cool nerve and bags of military expertise. Those were essential attributes for the founder members of the Special Air Service, one of the most revered fighting units in the world. Set in Egypt in 1941, this six-part series from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight offers a dramatised account of the early days of the SAS, revealing how British Army officer David Stirling (Sex Education’s Connor Swindells, below left, centre) hatched a plan for a group of expertly trained soldiers to cause mayhem behind enemy lines during the Second World War. With dark humour and explosive action, think Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds meets Band Of Brothers.
39 THE ENGLISH BBC2, 10 NOVEMBER
In this imaginative take on America’s Wild West, Emily Blunt stars as English aristocrat Lady
Cornelia Locke (below), a woman determined to take revenge on the person she holds responsible for the death of her son. The action takes place in the 1890s where Lady Cornelia strikes up a friendship with Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a Native American scout. Together they head to a town in Wyoming where sheriff Robert Marshall (Stephen Rea) is investigating a series of murders that could provide vital information for the intrepid aristo.
Bradley Walsh and Joanna Scanlan heading the lovable family, which includes voluptuous eldest daughter Mariette. She was played in the first series by Bridgerton’s Sabrina Bartlett, but has been replaced by Joelle Rae after Sabrina left due to scheduling issues. Series two sees a handsome new vicar move to the village, as well as the Jerebohm family, who cause more chaos for the Larkins.
40 DANGEROUS LIAISONS
AMAZON VIA STARZPLAY, 6 NOVEMBER Sex, intrigue, scheming and ridiculous wigs... it’s little wonder film-makers keep going back to Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s classic novel about sexual manipulation in 18th-century Paris. The film starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich won three Oscars, and this eight-part series with Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton (above) is the ‘origin’ story telling how the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont met as passionate young lovers on the eve of revolution.
41 THE LARKINS UTV, COMING SOON
The new adaptation of the HE Bates novels about life in the 1950s Kent countryside won an army of fans last year, with
42 A SPY AMONG FRIENDS UTV, NOVEMBER
Kim Philby was the treacherous real-life spy who betrayed not only his country but his lifelong best friend during the Cold War. Based on the novel of the same name by Ben Macintyre, this absorbing thriller is a forensic examination of the relationship between Philby (Guy Pearce), the British intelligence officer who passed secrets to the Soviets, and Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis, left), with whom he worked at MI6. Told in six parts, the series will also examine how Philby’s career as a double agent had ramifications for Anglo/ Soviet relations that are still felt today.
43 ANDOR DISNEY+, 21 SEPTEMBER
Andor is the latest in a constant stream of Star Wars spin-offs going both backwards and forwards in time in recent years. A 12-part prequel about the life of Cassian Andor, the thief turned rebel spy from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, this series is set during the time a Rebel Alliance is forming in opposition to the Galactic Empire. It will be the first of two series, with Diego Luna (top) reprising his role as Andor and Forest Whitaker returning as rebel fighter Saw Gerrera.
44 WILLOW DISNEY+, 30 NOVEMBER
Discussions about a sequel to the cult 1988 fantasy movie of the same name started as early as 2005, and Warwick Davis made it clear then that he was keen to reprise his role as farmer and aspiring sorcerer Willow Ufgood (above). Filming on this much-anticipated eight-part series finally got underway in Wales in June last year, with brave Willow taking centre stage yet again as a key member of an unlikely band of heroes embarking on a dangerous quest to save the world. Joanne Whalley also returns as Sorsha the warrior, the part she played in the original film.
46
THE DEVIL’S HOUR AMAZON, COMING SOON
Sherlock creator Steven
Moffat has written this deliciously scary horror story, which stars Jessica Raine as a woman named
Lucy who’s woken up every night by terrifying visions at exactly 3.33am — known as the devil’s hour. Meanwhile outside there’s a series of brutal murders, and Lucy becomes connected to them alongside Peter Capaldi’s creepy Gideon (above, with Lucy), a man Capaldi says ‘belongs to the night’. Is he friend or foe? You’ll have to watch to find out.
47
THE PERIPHERAL AMAZON, 21 OCTOBER
Strap yourself in for a terrifying ride into the future of mankind. Flynne (Chloe Grace Moretz, above right), who lives in smalltown America in the late 21st century, thinks she may have witnessed a murder when she takes on her brother’s security job. Publicist Wilf (former Death In Paradise star Gary Carr) has survived a period of apocalypse called The Jackpot and is now enjoying the high life in 22nd-century London. This fast-paced eight-part series, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by William Gibson, zig-zags between the two main characters’ often tortured timelines.
48
DOCTOR WHO BBC1, OCTOBER
It’s the end of the road for Jodie Whittaker after four frantic years as the Doctor (right), but a return to the screen for some iconic outfits. This episode, part of the
BBC’s 100th birthday celebrations, will feature characters wearing the long colourful scarf made famous by Tom Baker’s Doctor, a replica of the checked trousers sported by Patrick Troughton’s Time Lord and a version of Sylvester McCoy’s tank top adorned with the question marks from the late 80s. The Master (Sacha
Dhawan) also returns, as does Bradley Walsh as the Doctor’s loyal friend Graham O’Brien.
49 SLUMBERLAND
NETFLIX, 18 NOVEMBER Based on a 1905 comic strip, this adventure story for all the family centres on a girl called Nema
(Marlow Barkley, right) who lived in a lighthouse with her dad until he died at sea during a storm. Sent to live with an uncle, she discovers the dreamworld called Slumberland and a half-man, half-monster called Flip (Aquaman’s
Jason Momoa, far right) who offers to help her find her late father.