1 May 2022 35THE BEST TV FROM PRIME VIDEO AND BEYOND... MONDAY 2 MAY
25 Years Of OK Computer
As part of Radio 4’s season
looking at the impact of the
1990s on Britain, Archive
On 4 (Saturday, Radio 4,
8pm) celebrates 25 years
of Radiohead’s third album
in We’re All Living in OK
Computer Now. The novelist
Sarah Hall asks if the songs
on the record had prophetic
qualities that have shaped
our current world and talks
to the geneticist Dr Adam
Rutherford, the sci-fi author
Lauren Beukes and Conor
O’Brien, front man of the
Villagers. Other parts of
Radio 4’s 1990s season
are Bridget Jones’s Diary
(Monday-Friday, 10.45pm),
read by Sally Phillips, and
What Really Happened In
The Nineties? (Monday-
Friday, 1.45pm), a look back
at news events, presented
by Robert Carlyle.
Clair WoodwardThe Two Faces Of January
(BBC2, 10pm)
Two devious men (played
by Viggo Mortensen and
Oscar Isaac) compete for the
attention of a woman (Kirsten
Dunst) in this thriller’s early
stages, but a twist of fate
creates a more torturous link
between those rivals. The
story comes from a Patricia
Highsmith novel, and Hossein
Amini’s film honours its chilly
sense of irony. At the same
time, though, the movie has a
warmer climate than its title
might suggest. Set in Greek
tourist spots in the 1960s, it
dresses its stars in gorgeous
summer wear and gives them
handsome backdrops. (2014)Venom — Let There Be
Carnage (Sky Cinema
Premiere, 1.50pm/8pm)
A sequel to the 2018 film that
fused an ordinary guy (Tom
Hardy) with a viscous alien,
Andy Serkis’s film has no
flair in its action scenes (with
Woody Harrelson as another
man-monster hybrid), but its
humour is nicely daft. (2021)
Edward PorterFox and Bamber (Acorn TV) Two-faced? Dunst (BBC2, 10pm)FILM CHOICE
ON DEMAND
Heartstopper (Netflix)
Adapted by the writer and
illustrator Alice Oseman from
her own 2016 webcomic and
graphic novel, this sweet
coming-of-age tale deals with
the budding friendship (or
something more?) between
the highly strung Charlie ( Joe
Locke) and his rugby-playing
Mal, A Portrait Of Mal
Waldron (YouTube)
In the 1950s, he was pianist for
Charles Mingus, John Coltrane
and Billie Holiday, but after
a drug overdose in 1963 left
him unable to perform, Mal
Waldron taught himself piano
again and developed a new
style. Tom Van Overberghe’s
1997 film follows him on the
road, reassessing his legacy
and filming his genius.
Andrew MaleBlaps (All4)
In its short life, Channel 4’s
mini-comedy showcase has
given us Stath Lets Flats, Dead
Pixels and We Are Lady Parts.
It’s a diverting game to watch
the seven newest offerings
and decide which are destined
to hit the big time. Our money
is on Disability Benefits, which
stars Rosie Jones as a canny
young woman who turns
to drug dealing when her
disability benefits are slashed.I Love America
(Amazon Prime Video)
Sophie Marceau stars in
this Amazon original as a
Frenchwoman who moves to
Los Angeles in search of a new
start. Lisa Azuelos’s movie, a
Gallic production, takes the
chance to poke fun at a few
aspects of California life, but it
lets Hollywood norms set the
tone for its story, a flimsy but
good-natured comic drama
about finding love. (2022) EPpal, Nick (Kit Connor). Set
at the kind of hyper-real
grammar school that only
exists in Netflix dramas, and
starring a young cast giving
the impression they are
straight out of drama school,
it’s a show that laughs in the
face of realism, but that seems
to be the point, that making a
drama about gay friendship
that is defiantly saccharine
and romantic is a political
statement in itself.Ray of hope: is Parminder Nagra’s police promotion racially motivated? (ITV, 9pm)DI Ray (ITV, 9pm)
Twenty years after Bend it
Like Beckham, Parminder
Nagra plays a Birmingham
detective inspector promoted
to homicide; but DI Ray soon
learns that Gemma Whelan’s
pig-headed DCI (confusing
casting, given her contrasting
cop in ITV’s The Tower) is
sure the killers were Asian
and needs an Asian officer
to make the arrests. Written
by the actress Maya Sondhi
(Maneet Bindra in Line of
Duty), the four-parter shows
the case as plunging Ray
into a crisis over her dual
identity (in her forties?). Jed
Mercurio is the executive
producer and, like other
thrillers he has overseen,
it lacks some of the pizzazz of
the series he writes, but it is
a high-quality replica with
no shortage of his beloved
twists. Continues tomorrow.
John DugdaleImagine (BBC1, 10.40pm)
It started, as so many things
do, on YouTube, when a north
London teenager uploaded
videos of his a cappella
harmonies from his suburban
house. In Jacob Collier — In the
Room Where it Happens, Alan
Yentob explores the Grammy-
winning phenomenon that
exploded from that first
transmission, visiting the
multi-instrumentalist Collier in
his home studio, tracing his
development from his
(inevitably) musical childhood
and discussing his current
process. With astonishing
testimonials from Quincy
Jones (“Whatever he does
blows my mind”) and Herbie
Hancock, it’s a vibrant portrait
of a wild musical anomaly.
See feature on page 16.
Victoria Segal
Signora Volpe
(Acorn TV on Prime Video)
The idea of Emilia Fox as a
disillusioned British spy (with
an ex-husband) solving cases in
Umbria, reliant on technology
such as a toothbrush dongle
and a lipstick fingerprint
reader, is patently ridiculous,
but here we are, courtesy of
scripts from two Midsomer
Murders writers.Food Unwrapped’s
Supermarket Secrets
(C4, 8pm)
From dumpster-diving to magic
bags, the team finds out what
shops are doing to reduce their
food waste, looks at the legal
complexities of branding
products to look like market
leaders and reveals that one
big supermarket uses robots
to pick our internet orders.Married To A Psychopath
(C4, 10pm)
Channel 4 claims that this is
“the untold story” of Malcolm
Webster, who targeted and
killed women in Scotland, and
the detective who tracked him
down. Can we assume the 2014
ITV drama The Widower (with
Reece Shearsmith and Sheridan
Smith) has slipped C4’s mind?
Helen StewartCRITICS’ CHOICE
Predicting life in
the 21st century