28 saturday review Saturday April 30 2022 | the times
Joe Cocker:
Mad Dogs &
Englishmen
Sky Arts, 9pmHe appeared at Woodstock the
previous year, but it was the
million-selling album version
of this 1970 concert film that
made Joe Cocker a superstar.
And this was the live show that
almost didn’t happen. Cocker
fell out with his backing band
and recruited a huge American
group that included Leon
Russell as musical director,
plus three drummers, a horn
section and a choir including
Linda Ronstadt. The album was
recorded in New York, but this
film was taken from a later
concert in Berlin. DM● UTV As ITV except: 8.00pm The UTV
Election Debate 9.00-10.00 The Great
British Treasure Hunt (r) 10.15 Grace
12.15-12.25am World of Sport (r)
● BBC Scotland 7.00pm The Seven 7.15
Sportscene 8.15 Landward (r) 8.45
Beechgrove Repotted (r) 9.00
Paramedics on Scene 10.00 Still Game (r)
10.30 Raiders of the Lost Archive (r)
11.00-Midnight Seven Days
● S4C 6.00am Cyw: Sam Tân (r) 6.10 Jen a
Jim Pob Dim (r) 6.25 Guto Gwningen (r)
6.40 Sbarc (r) 6.55 Cei Bach (r) 7.10
Jamborî (r) 7.20 Octonots (r) 7.30
Cacamwnci (r) 7.45 Pablo (r) 8.00 Amser
Maith Maith yn Ôl (r) 8.15 Blero yn Mynd i
Ocido (r) 8.25 Anifeiliaid Bach y Byd (r)
8.35 Awyr Iach (r) 8.50 Penblwyddi Cyw
9.00 Garddio a Mwy (r) 9.30 Sain Ffagan
(r) 10.00 Yr Ynys (r) 11.00 Rygbi (r) 12.00
Yr Wythnos 12.30pm Bwrdd i Dri (r) 1.00
Waliau’n Siarad (r) 2.00 Parti Bwyd Beca
(r) 2.30 Parti Bwyd Beca (r) 2.55 Ffermio
(r) 3.25 Ffoadur Tim Pel-Droed Maesglas
3.40 Live Sgorio: Penybont v The New
Saints (Kick-off 4.00) 6.10 Pobol y Cwm
Omnibws (r) 7.15 News 7.30 Dechrau
Canu Dechrau Canmol 8.00 Iaith ar Daith
9.00 FFlach: Dathlu’r 40 (r) 10.00 Y Llinell
Las (r) 10.30-11.35 Terfysg yn y Bae (r)
(r) repeat (SL) In-vision signing● BBC1 Wales As BBC1 except:
10.00-10.30am Politics Wales. Political
news and debate 5.05-5.35pm
Snowdonia: A Year on the Farm (r)
● BBC2 Wales As BBC2 except:
6.00-7.00pm Scrum V Sunday. A look
back at the latest rugby union, which
included Wales v Italy in the Women’s
Six Nations, and Ospreys v Scarlets
in the United Rugby Championship
● BBC1 N Ireland As BBC1 except:
10.00am Sunday Politics Northern
Ireland 10.30pm Bikes! Cookstown 100
11.10 Match of the Day 2 12.15am The
Women’s Football Show 12.50 Question
of Sport (r) 1.20-6.00 BBC News
● BBC2 N Ireland As BBC2 except:
3.45pm-6.00 Live The Championship:
Tyrone v Derry (Throw-in 4.00) 10.00 Ar
Scáth an Cheoil 10.30 Politics (r) 11.00
Muhammad Ali 11.50 Jazz Divas Gold (r)
12.50-1.00am Barra on the Bann (r)
● BBC1 Scotland As BBC1 except:
10.00-10.30am The Sunday Show
11.35pm Sportscene 12.35am The
Women’s Football Show 1.10 Question of
Sport (r) 1.40 Weather for the Week
Ahead 1.45-6.00 BBC News
● STV As ITV except: 1.30pm-4.00 Live
STV Racing: From Newmarket 6.50-7.00
STV News 3.50-5.05am Unwind with STVHowards End (PG, 1992)
Film4, 1.10pm
The high-water mark of Merchant Ivory film-making presents us
with protagonists who are neither villainous nor heroic, just
tragically caught between a rigid class system and rapidly evolving
early 20th-century society. Chief among them are the Schlegel
sisters, played by Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson
(an Oscar-winning turn). Thompson plays the older, more sensible
sister, Margaret, who likes culture, art and doing the right thing,
and has the good fortune, or misfortune, of marrying the hard-
nosed businessman Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins, in one of
those performances where rage appears to bubble just below the
surface). It’s the final message of compassion in the face of human
foibles that leads the film to greatness. (142min) Kevin MaherFilms of the day
Free State of Jones (15, 2016)
BBC2, 10.50pm
Matthew McConaughey, above, stars as Newton Knight, a battle-
weary Confederate soldier who deserts, deciding that he no longer
wants to fight for the rights of slave owners. As corrupt, sleazy
Confederates take local farmers’ supplies, Knight fights a guerrilla
war and hides in a swampland forest with a group of runaway
slaves. The small revolution in Jones County, Mississippi, is seen
partly through the prism of a white rebel rescuing African-
Americans, but there is also a decent and complex part for Gugu
Mbatha-Raw as Rachel, who becomes Knight’s common-law wife.
Directed by Gary Ross, the film tries too hard to chart years of
racial history in the South, but uncovers some fresh territory
nevertheless. (134min) Kate MuirMuhammad Ali
BBC2, 10pmHindsight is 20-20, but even at
the time people were willing
Muhammad Ali to retire from
the ring long before he did.
This final part of the Ken Burns-
affiliated documentary series
follows Ali through retirement
and ill-advised comebacks at
the turn of the 1980s in which
he got some lucrative
pummellings that aren’t
pleasant to look at. Then it
covers divorce, remarriage,
becoming a globe-trotting
ambassador as he learnt to
cope with his Parkinson’s
disease, and the affecting
moment in 1996 when he
unexpectedly turned up to
light the flame of the Olympic
torch in Atlanta. DMRegional programmes
Catch
up
La Voix Humaine
BBC iPlayer
In 1958 the French
writer Jean
Cocteau and his
friend the
composer Francis
Poulenc created a
musical version
of Cocteau’s
one-woman
play La Voix
Humaine. It
required
great
acting as
well as
great
singing.This innovative hour-long
reimagining begins with the
star soprano Danielle de Niese
discussing with the conductor
Antonio Pappano the role of
Elle that she’s about to play.
Then the performance itself:
De Niese, below, as a
woman in a desperate
phone conversation
with her departing
lover — from hope
to despair to
acceptance. It’s at
once an operatic
vignette and
an acting
showcase.
James
JacksonOur Changing
Planet
BBC1, 7pm
The second and final part — for
the time being — of the BBC’s
ambitious seven-year plan to
document the impact of
climate change around the
world. This week Liz Bonnin
goes to California where the
rise in sea temperatures is
sending great white sharks
further north than before. Ade
Adepitan visits Kenya in
December — still bone dry even
though the rainy season should
have started in October. And
Gordon Buchanan visits Brazil,
“the most biodiverse country in
the world”, where deforestation
has helped to lead to a 40 per
cent drop in rainfall there. DM
Prisoner C33
BBC4, 9pmWhich actor is fit to take on
Toby Stephens at full pelt?
Why, step forward Toby
Stephens, here playing
an English-accented Oscar
Wilde suffering his way
through his spell in Reading
Gaol as Prisoner 33 and
an Irish-accented, epithet-
spouting Oscar Wilde cajoling
and encouraging and
sometimes torturing himself
too. Directed by Trevor Nunn
and written by Stuart
Patterson, this one-off
one-man play features one
of Wilde’s great lines: “Man
is least himself when he
speaks in his own person. Give
him a mask and he will tell
the truth.” DMSunday 1 | Viewing guide
Critic’s choice
Grace
ITV, 8pm
If you’ve followed the career
of Arthur Darvill through his
work as, say, the hapless Rory
in Doctor Who or as the vicar
in Broadchurch, you can’t help
but feel warmly towards him.
Such a nice face. So ITV has
been canny to cast him as the
guilty-as-sin (or is he?) chief
suspect in this second episode
of the new run of stories for
John Simm’s Detective
Superintendent Roy Grace,
right. Darvill plays the sort of
flash businessman who, in
true Columbo villain style,
responds to questions from
detectives with arrogance
rather than humility. And
when he breaks down at the
sight of his dead wife, is this
real emotion or crocodile
tears for the benefit of Grace
and his back-from-serious-
injury sidekick DS Glenn
Branson (Richie Campbell)?
Yes, you’ve been here before,
even if you haven’t read the
Peter James books the show is
based on, and even if you
don’t find yourself ticking
off the various Brighton
landmarks the show keeps
visiting (they work that West
Pier hard). Yet the adapter
Russell Lewis, the man behind
the Inspector Morse prequel
Endeavour, knows his murder-
mystery onions. So if Grace
is a strategically bland hero,
Simm, right, lends the role
enough mature conviction
to help sell us on the
convolutions of a story
that involves murders, an
explosive device, a suspicious
£4 million life insurance policy
and intimations of bondage
sessions. You will be asked to
swallow some, shall we say,
fanciful plot developments.
Yet, with storytelling this
assured, not to mention
Craig “Dot Cottan from Line
of Duty” Parkinson a regular
as DS Norman Potting, it all
goes down pretty easily.
Dominic Maxwell