3 April 2022 39THE BEST TV FROM IPLAYER AND BEYOND... TUESDAY 5 APRIL
Champions League Football
It’s England versus the Iberian
peninsula this week as the
Premier League top three
take on Portuguese and
Spanish giants in the first
leg of the Uefa Champions
League quarter finals.
Tonight, Liverpool travel to
Lisbon to face Benfica (BT
Sport 3, 7.15pm), the Reds’
only defeat so far coming
against Inter Milan in the
second leg of the round of 16;
while Manchester City
welcome Diego Simeone’s
Atletico Madrid (BT Sport 2,
7pm), who knocked out
Manchester United at the
last stage. Tomorrow night,
the defending champions,
Chelsea, host 13-time winners
Real Madrid at Stamford
Bridge (BT Sport 2, 7pm)
as the two sides meet for a
second consecutive season
in the knockout stages.
Brian Smyth99 Homes (BBC2, 11.15pm)
Andrew Garfield, whose
own career has lately been
on a high, plays someone at
rock bottom in this drama:
his character is a jobless
handyman given a chance
to work for the shady estate
agent (Michael Shannon) who
just evicted him and his family
from their repossessed home.
This framework gives Ramin
Bahrani’s film all the space it
needs for its purposes. The
script can accommodate
details on rotten practices
in America’s housing system
without cramping the nuances
of its particular story. Garfield
and Shannon settle nicely into
their well-built roles. (2014)Summer Of Sam
(Great! Movies, 9pm)
Set in New York’s heat-wave
summer of 1977, when the
serial killer known as the
Son of Sam was at large, this
Spike Lee film is a tangle of
storylines in a high-pressure
atmosphere. It studies urban
hysteria in the age of punk,
disco and Studio 54. (1999)
Edward PorterA chase through history (ITV, 9pm) Brody and Leguizamo (Great!, 9pm)FILM CHOICE
ON DEMAND
WeCrashed (Apple TV+)
Professional tip: while watching
this true-crime mini-series
about the rise and fall of
pseudo-start-up real-estate
company WeWork, keep
your eyes trained on Anne
Hathaway. At no point direct
your attention to her co-star
Jared Leto. Leto plays Adam
Murder In The Badlands
(BBC iPlayer)
A philosophical series looking
at the murders of four women
over four decades in Northern
Ireland. The films speak to
family members, journalists,
police and criminologists, a
standard approach revealing
profound results, as this is a
series that asks deep questions
about politics, national identity
and the worth of a human life.
Andrew MaleCity! (YouTube)
Unlike the glossy club-endorsed
Manchester City documentary
All or Nothing, this 1981 Granada
TV film is down and dirty. It
follows the struggling Blues as
Malcolm Allison hands over
management reins to the more
disciplined John Bond. Highly
emotional and bleakly funny,
this is gripping human drama
and the scenes in which Allison
realises the scope of his failure
are utterly devastating.Windfall (Netflix)
Having trapped a rich couple
( Jesse Plemons and Lily
Collins) in their holiday home
with a desperate thief ( Jason
Segel), Charlie McDowell’s
crime drama fails to give its
three characters enough to
do. Still, they are well-drawn
creations, Plemons’s smug
CEO being the most vivid.
Their conversations twist and
turn even when the storyline
doesn’t. (2022) EPNeumann, the delusional
blowhard frontman of WeWork,
and plays him as a series of
curious ticks and cartoon
flourishes that are exhausting
to behold. Hathaway, as his
wife, Rebekah, is a marvel,
and invests the eight-part
drama with a believable
human core. You care about
what happens to her, even if
you don’t quite sympathise
with her. Leto is just goofing
off by comparison.World beater and hard hitter: Ellie Simmonds speaks out on dwarfism (BBC1, 9pm)Ellie Simmonds —
A World Without
Dwarfism? (BBC1, 9pm)
In this strong documentary,
the five-time Paralympic gold
medallist Ellie Simmonds
sheds the ruthless positivity
of her Team GB media
training to make a hard-
hitting film on the ethical
quandary that is posed by
a drug that might signal an
end to growth restriction
and “people like me”. In
an “inclusive” society,
why should children with
dwarfism be regularly
injected with powerful
medicines, she wonders.
An intuitively incisive
interviewer, she reduces
former team-mate Will Perry
to stunned silence, and, at an
American charity fundraiser,
makes an off-the-cuff speech
to camera that cuts through
the party mood like a scalpel.
Helen StewartDeadline (C5, 9pm)
For TV journalist James ( James
D’Arcy), Natalie (Charlie
Murphy) represents a chance
to revive his ailing career. She
is a widow who is suspected of
having murdered her wealthy
husband, and James is out to
prove she is guilty; so he is
surprised when she suggests a
filmed interview on condition
that he will try to trace the
real killer. Is she innocent, as
she insists, or a femme fatale?
It is a promising set-up, but
so far Deadline lacks both the
memorable minor characters
and bangs and kisses we expect
from noir drama. Perhaps that’s
why part one’s concluding
trailer seems to contain spoilers
for the next three nights —
desperation to show shocks
and sex are coming soon?
John Dugdale
Masterchef (BBC1, 8pm)
Armed with recipes for luxury
fish pie, rice pudding, jollof
rice and prawn tortellini,
nine new amateur chefs arrive
for another “audition” round
in the venerable cooking
competition. Full marks go
to the contestant who simply
announces “I love cooking!”
— which is the show’s ultimate
mission statement.DNA Journey (ITV, 9pm)
A state-of-the-art Who Do
You Think You Are?, this
show allows celebrities to
investigate their ancestry
with the help of cutting-edge
DNA technology. Tonight’s
subjects are quiz-show royalty
Anne Hegerty and Shaun
Wallace, who will be chasing
down unknown relatives
and family connections.A Believer’s Guide: Settling
Down (BBC1, 10.35pm)
This tender film follows young
Christians Grace and Jess as
they get married and move
into their new home — a canal
boat in London. Underlying
these rites of passage are
their worries about finding
a church that affirms same-
sex relationships.
Victoria SegalCRITICS’ CHOICE
Clash of the titans
in quarter-finals