WELL WORTH A PEEK!
WHAT better way to keep yourself entertained than in front of some brilliant TV. All this week the Mail’s TV critic Christopher Stevens and TV editor Mike Mulvihill are pointing you towards the best shows on catch-up and streaming services. Yesterday it was comedy classics, and there are documentaries, movies and family shows to come. But today it’s the most memorable dramas . . .
PITCH-PERFECT PERIOD PIECES Peaky Blinders iPLAYER/NETFLIX
Part comic book, part old-school gangster movie, all high-stakes emotion, this 1920s gangland thriller could be the most stylish serial ever screened. Cillian Murphy is Tommy Shelby, World War I veteran, opium addict and boss of a small-time gipsy crime family that expands to become a national empire. Tommy faces down enemies on all sides, from the New York mafia to Winston Churchill, but his successes come at a terrible cost to the people he loves. Helen McCrory is Tommy’s hard-drinking, psychic Aunt Polly, with Paul Anderson as his thug of a brother Arthur. Five series, the latest is on iPlayer, the previous four are on Netflix.
Gentleman Jack iPLAYER
In the early 19th century, an era when women were regarded as second-class citizens, Anne Lister was unique: she dressed and lived like a man, known to the locals as Gentleman Jack. She took a series of lovers, many of them married women, and then settled down with a lady called Ann. Sally Wainwright, creator of Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley (both available on BritBox), takes this true story and turns it into a rollicking period melodrama with Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, setting her cap at Sophie Rundle. One series
War And Peace iPLAYER
Writer Andrew Davies brings Tolstoy’s sprawling epic of the Napoleonic wars to the screen by ignoring the political theory and philosophical argument and concentrating on the tortured love story of Prince Andrei (James Norton) and Natasha Rostova (Lily James). The production abounds with wonderful characters: Tuppence Middleton is the heartless Helene, humiliating her husband Pierre (Paul Dano) by having an affair with her brother, while Stephen Rea, Adrian Edmondson and Gillian Anderson all dazzle. Mesmerising. One series
Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes iPLAYER
Is this the cleverest twist on a time-travel tale ever? John Simm is 21st-century copper Sam Tyler, who wakes up in 1973 following a car accident. He’s still a detective — but there’s a suspect in the cells being beaten black and blue and Sam’s boss is a bullying wideboy with a half-bottle of Scotch in his pocket. Philip Glenister plays DCI Gene Hunt, who believes in getting the first punch and the first round in. The show was reinvented as Ashes To Ashes, sending Keeley Hawes back to the 1980s where Gene was waiting for her. Five series
The Musketeers iPLAYER
Luke Pasqualino takes the role of D’Artagnan in this adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s novel, with Peter Capaldi as wicked Cardinal Richelieu and Tom Burke as the morose Athos,
The Trial Of Christine Keeler iPLAYER
This is a chronicle not just of the greatest political scandal in Westminster’s history but of how the class divides started to disintegrate in the seedy ambience of the 1960s. James Norton is louche osteopath Stephen Ward, who oiled his way into upper-crust society with a teenage showgirl on each arm. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies were his tickets into this exclusive world,
where peers and cabinet ministers mingled at Lord Astor’s Cliveden country house. Sophie Cookson is Christine, hardbitten but innocent, and Ellie Bamber is Mandy, her worldly-wise friend. One series
Upstairs, Downstairs BRITBOX
The show that defined everything we want from period drama — sets dripping with wealth, sumptuous costumes, superheated stories and plenty of reassurance that, though it’s the rich wot’s got the money, it’s the poor wot has the fun. Gordon Jackson was Hudson the butler, keeping order at 165 Eaton Place — the father figure to the three maids and the household’s cook Mrs Bridges (Angela Baddeley). The show spans 30 years, from the late Victorian era to beyond World War I. The first series is in black and white but after a few minutes you’ll barely notice. Five series
Downton Abbey BRITBOX/NOWTV/SKY/NETFLIX
Without Upstairs, Downstairs there could never have been a Downton. This time the butler is called Carson (Jim Carter) and the unmarried daughters of Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) behave far more scandalously than would ever have been permitted at Eaton Place. Dame Maggie Smith steals every scene she’s in as the Dowager Countess with a tongue dipped in acid, but there isn’t a weak character. Six series
Victoria BRITBOX
Jenna Coleman is perfect casting for the tiny, imperious princess whose reign defined the 19th century. Her real-life boyfriend Tom Hughes is Prince Albert. Written by novelist Daisy Goodwin, each episode draws closely on real events such as the Corn Law riots and London’s cholera outbreak. There’s a dusting of romance as servants fall in love with aristocrats, princes scheme to marry wealthy duchesses, and the young queen finds herself inexplicably drawn to her wolfish Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell). Three series
Brideshead Revisited BRITBOX
This 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel is perhaps the greatest costume drama of all time. Jeremy Irons is Charles Ryder, an undergraduate at Oxford who forms an intense friendship with hedonistic Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews). Flyte loathes his family but insists on taking Charles to their country estate ‘to meet mummy’, but it is Sebastian’s sister Julia (Diana Quick) who really catches his eye. Laurence Olivier plays Lord Marchmain and John Gielgud is Charles’s snobbish, small-minded father. One series
The Jewel In The Crown BRITBOX
A sensational staging of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, a portrait of the disintegration of British rule in India and the social upheavals this brought. Among a stupendous cast, Tim Pigott-Smith stands out as the bigoted policeman Merrick, who has a young, privately educated Indian man named Hari (Art Malik) arrested and beaten following the rape of a British woman. One series
The Darling Buds Of May BRITBOX
David Jason is at his most rascally as Pop Larkin, a Kentish farmer in the late 1950s whose schemes on the side keep his family in comparative luxury. Pam Ferris is Ma Larkin, but all the media attention at the time was focused on newcomer Catherine ZetaJones as their daughter Mariette. Three series
Catherine The Great NOWTV/SKY
Helen Mirren defies age to play the Russian empress, three decades younger than herself, in this opulent drama. Gina McKee is the scheming courtier, Richard Roxburgh is the queen’s discarded lover and Jason Clarke, as the dashing soldier Potemkin, is her next love interest. One series
Deadwood NOWTV/SKY
For scene-stealing and sheer relish, no one can outdo Ian McShane who fulminates and erupts his way through the Wild West here. All the characters are based on real people: McShane plays Al Swearengen, the saloon keeper who wages a constant war against town sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) – until the two have to face a bigger enemy in oil and gold baron George Hearst (Gerald McRaney). Three series
Boardwalk Empire NOWTV/SKY
Before Peaky Blinders there was Nucky Thompson and his illegal liquor racket in Prohibition America. Nucky is a politician but he’s surrounded by gangsters including Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. Steve Buscemi plays the corrupt treasurer in Atlantic City, whose ruthless business instincts are undermined by a weakness for forcing his help on people when he thinks they need it. Kelly Macdonald is the woman he saves from an abusive marriage, who becomes his mistress. Five series
Mad Men NETFLIX
Jon Hamm radiates charisma as advertising exec Don Draper who masks a secret: he stole his identity from a dead officer in the Korean War and watches his life as if it’s happening at a distance. But his efforts to fill the void destroy his comfortable existence as he betrays his wife and clients. January Jones is his wife Betty, the fairy-tale bride who hates living happily ever after, and Elisabeth Moss is copywriter Peggy Olson — Mad Men’s real heroine — doing the impossible by outdoing the men. Seven series