the times | Saturday April 30 2022 saturday review 23
t v & ra di o
Best of the rest
Full seven-day listings & previews
Podcast choice
The Backstory
Andrew Neil, the chairman
of The Spectator, brings
old-school media values to
a modern medium. He is
tenacious, sharp and
well-informed. His first guest
is General David Petraeus,
who ran the CIA and
commanded US forces in Iraq.
James MarriottCritic’s choice
The Staircase
Thu, Sky Atlantic, 9pm
Colin Firth is almost invariably
a reason to watch something
— even, it turns out, when this
most British of actors is
putting on an American
accent. For evidence there is
The Staircase, HBO’s eight-part
true crime drama portraying
the case of Michael Peterson,
an author suspected in the
death of his second wife (Toni
Collette) whose body was
found lying at the bottom of
their mansion’s staircase.
Firth’s Peterson is an
enigma from the off, although
some will be familiar with
the story given that it was
recounted in a hit Netflix
documentary of the same
name. If you don’t know what
happened, no googling.
The first episode is terrific,
not just because of the
steadily drip-fed revelations
and the high-calibre cast
(among it Michael Stuhlbarg as
Peterson’s lawyer, and a big
name revealed at the end),
but for the question you’re
continually prodded to ask
yourself. Can you read Firth’s
tearful face as he looks aghast
at the notion that he could be
capable of killing his beloved?
Simply: guilty or not guilty?
James Jackson
Radio choice
Zadie Smith
with the BBC
Symphony
Orchestra
Today, Radio 4, 3pm
Music has always coursed
through Zadie Smith’s writing:
at university she worked as a
jazz singer, while her 2016
novel Swing Time, longlisted
for the Booker prize, is
steeped in her love of music
and dance. And now she gets
to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition of
singing with a big band (well,
the BBC Symphony Orchestra).
It was recorded on April 22
at the Barbican, and described
by our chief music critic,
Richard Morrison, as “fun,
stimulating and a lot less
incongruous than the idea
seemed”. Smith gives readings
from Swing Time as well as
White Teeth, the novel she
wrote as a student that made
her perhaps the defining voice
of young Britain at the turn of
the millennium.
The music is eclectic. It
includes Harold Arlen’s Stormy
Weather, Frank Zappa’s
Outrage at Valdez (about the
1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill)
and John Adams’s Short Ride
in a Fast Machine. With witty
asides, there are reflections on
the music, ideas and artists
who have challenged,
provoked and inspired her.
The evening includes Smith
singing a decent rendition of
(fittingly) the Rodgers and
Hart classic I Could Write a
Book. Well, of course.
Ben DowellThe best filmsColin Firth and
Toni Collette in
The StaircaseMuhammad Ali
Sun, BBC2, 10pm
The last in Ken Burns’s elegiac
eight-part documentary series
(worth finding on iPlayer if
you’ve missed it) reaches Ali’s
sad, ill-advised final years as a
boxer — and beyond.DI Ray
Mon, ITV, 9pm
The USP of our latest TV
detective is that she’s an
Asian Brummie (a very good
Parminder Nagra) having to
cope with unwitting racism
around her while being
brilliant. She is newly
promoted and on a “culturally
specific homicide”.Kicking Off: The Rise and Fall
of the Super League
Wed, BBC2, 9.30pm
A year on from the kiboshed
football Super League, here’s
a film that asks how such a
plan — one that would drop
the fundamental
principle that any
team can climb to
the top — could have
appeared out of
nowhere.Paul Merson: A Walk
Through My Life
Thu, BBC2, 8pm
Paul Merson and a 360-
degree camera go on a lone
walk through Yorkshire as hereflects on his tumultuous life
as a football dynamo and
chronic addict before his
three years of sobriety.The Terror: Infamy
Fri, BBC2, 9pm
The first series took us
on a Victorian Arctic
voyage into grisly
hell; series two is a
new story about a
spirit infiltrating a
Japanese-American
family (including Kiki
Sukezane, left) in a California
fishing community at the time
of Pearl Harbor. A slow-burn
mood dominates, sometimes
over the title’s promise. JJTerminator 2 (15)
Sat, ITV, 10.35pm
Propulsively entertaining,
however many times Arnie’s
cyborg has been back.Howards End (PG)
Sun, Film4, 1.10pm
Perfect Merchant-
Ivory matinee with
an Oscar-winning
Emma Thompson.The Third
Secret (PG)
Sun, Talking
Pictures TV, 7pm
A great cast forthis 1964 mystery about
the death of a psychiatrist,
Richard Attenborough,
Jack Hawkins and Judi
Dench among it.The Two Faces of January (12)
Mon, BBC2, 10pm
Shades of The
Talented Mr
Ripley in another
Patricia Highsmith
thriller under the
sun, with Oscar
Isaac a conman
coming
between Viggo
Mortensen and
Kirsten Dunst,
left, in Greece. JJ