28 saturday review Saturday June 11 2022 | the times
Inside the
Elizabeth Line
BBC2, 8pmThe Elizabeth Line launched
four years late and £4 billion
over budget, with large crowds
queueing to ride the new
railway as if it were the last
rocket leaving a dying planet.
For ten years a film crew has
followed the construction
process of Crossrail — not
named after how it made
people feel from all the delays
— and this final chapter begins
in 2019 when its new boss is
wild. Mark Wild, to be precise,
who is tasked with dragging
the project towards the light at
the end of the tunnel, starting
with clearing a Bond Street
blockage. TE● BBC Scotland 7.00pm The Seven 7.15
Grand Tours of Scotland’s Lochs (r) 8.15
Rewind 1990s (r) 8.30 Landward (r) 9.00
David Wilson’s Crime Files (r) 10.00 Still
Game (r) 10.30 Two Doors Down (r)
11.00pm-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 Gerddi
Cymru (r) 10.00 Teulu’r Castell (r) 11.00
Natur Gudd Cymru (r) 11.30 Dechrau
Canu Dechrau Canmol (r) 12.00 Yr
Wythnos 12.30pm Adre (r) 1.00 Y Stiwdio
Grefftau (r) 2.00 Parti Bwyd Beca (r) 2.30
Parti Bwyd Beca (r) 3.00 Caeau Cymru (r)
3.30 Pobol Port Talbot (r) 4.00 3 Lle (r)
4.35 Only Men Aloud yn Bollywood (r)
5.35 Ffermio (r) 6.10 Pobol y Cwm
Omnibws (r) 7.15 News 7.30 Dechrau
Canu Dechrau Canmol 8.00 Am Dro!
9.00 Y Golau. Things go from bad to
worse for Sharon and Joe 10.00 Y Llinell
Las. Last in the series (r) 11.00-11.35
Gwesty Parc y Stradey (r)
(r) repeat (SL) In-vision signing● BBC1 Wales As BBC1 except:
10.00am-10.30 Politics Wales 4.50pm
Garden Rescue (r) 5.20-5.50 Iolo’s
Anglesey (r) 10.30 Ending the Falklands
War 10.55-12.30am FILM Sully: Miracle
on the Hudson (2016) Fact-based drama
starring Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart
● BBC2 Wales As BBC2 except:
5.10pm-6.10 The Story of Welsh Art. Last
in the series (r) 11.30 Under Pressure:
Spotlight on the NHS. Problems with
the health service in Wales (r)
12.30am-1.00 Between the Covers (r)
● BBC1 N Ireland As BBC1 except:
10.00am-10.30 Sunday Politics Northern
Ireland. With Mark Carruthers 10.30pm
Nations League Highlights. Northern
Ireland v Cyprus from Windsor Park
11.10 FILM Sully: Miracle on the Hudson
(2016) 12.40am-6.00 BBC News
● BBC2 N Ireland As BBC2 except:
11.30pm-Midnight Sunday
Politics Northern Ireland (r)
● BBC1 Scotland As BBC1 except:
10.00am-10.30 The Sunday Show
● ITV Wales As ITV except: 10.55am
Wales on TV. Plans are revealed to
demolish Cardiff Castle (r) 11.30-Noon
Newsweek Wales. Major stories in Wales
● STV As ITV except: 6.15pm-6.30 STV
News 3.50am-5.05 Unwind with STVOpen Range (12, 2003)
Channel 5, 3.45pm
Kevin Costner turned down the title role in Quentin Tarantino’s
Kill Bill to produce, direct and star in this classy western.
He plays Charley Waite, a herder who, with his partner Boss
Spearman (Robert Duvall, below with Costner) and their
employees (including the Mexican star Diego Luna), free-grazes
his cattle on wide-open plains. Michael Gambon plays the
conniving, if not downright tyrannical local rancher who wants
to bully the men and their animals off his land. Annette Bening
is the sister of the town doctor, and she turns out to be
Charley’s tentative love interest. The leisurely and dignified
build-up leads to a climax that proves to be spectacularly bloody.
(139min) Wendy IdeFilms of the day
Sully: Miracle on the Hudson (12, 2016)
BBC1, 10.30pm
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was the pilot of US Airways Flight
1549, which ditched into the Hudson River in New York in 2009.
Sully’s skill saved 155 passengers and crew, and he became the
hero in what came to be called “the miracle on the Hudson”.
Obviously, only one man could play such a solid figure of
American pluck — Tom Hanks. Depending on your ease with air
travel, parts of Sully will be a thrilling rollercoaster ride or a
stomach-flipping horror. Clint Eastwood excels in directing the
adrenaline-filled minutes, from the moment a flock of birds strike
the engines after take-off from LaGuardia airport to the point
when the crippled plane uses the Hudson as a runway. (92min)
Kate MuirWhat Killed the
Whale?
Channel 4, 9pmThe final song of one sei whale
wasn’t an ethereal aria in an
oceanic auditorium, but a
pitiful belch on a concrete dock
as its guts were cut open
during a post-mortem. In the
past five years there have been
some 500 whale strandings in
the UK, so while a beached
whale is sadly not uncommon,
this one was far from its
normal migratory route. To
discover its cause of death,
the biologist Ella Al-Shamahi
observes a specialist forensic
team as they conduct a
necropsy, where she learns its
blubber is an organic ledger
of human pollution. TERegional programmes
Catch
up
Borgen
Netflix
Nine years after ending,
Borgen is back. In the
Scandi-TV boom in
Britain in the early
2010s, this show
stood out among all
the rest for being
nothing to do with
crime or oddball
detectives.
Instead, it
was a close-
up view of
politics,
and of
office
politics,as a Danish centrist politician,
Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett
Knudsen, below), ended up
prime minister. This time
you’ll need Netflix, however, as
we rejoin our idealistic hero,
now foreign minister in the
government of a younger
female PM, and struggling to
toe the party line when oil
in Greenland sparks a
diplomatic crisis.
The slippery link
between politics
and journalism is
neatly depicted,
although as ever the
real feat is in making
intricate
Danish
politics so
smoothly
appealing.
James
JacksonBecoming Elizabeth
Starzplay
You may find yourself
imagining what the Succession
theme sounds like on a lute
when you’re plunged into the
immediate aftermath of Henry
VIII’s death and the rush by
nobles to install his heir, as well
as themselves. In the end, much
like her later railway namesake,
the original Elizabeth line would
launch after numerous delays.
Elizabeth’s turbulent youth
provides rich material for
drama and the gilded danger of
these early years is enjoyably
realised, many wolves stalking
great Tudor halls, and features
an excellent cast including
Romola Garai, Jessica Raine,
Bella Ramsey and Alicia von
Rittberg. TE
Soccer Aid for
Unicef
ITV, 6.30pmPlaying alongside Usain Bolt,
Andrea Pirlo and Carli Anne
Hollins is certain to give
Rest of the World XI player
Lee Mack plenty of material
for future series of Would
I Lie to You?, though the main
focus of the event remains
raising money for Unicef.
The England team is replete
with talent too, with Liam
Payne captaining Gary Neville,
Mo Farah and Fara Williams,
and they’ll be out for
revenge at the London
Stadium after England’s 3-0
defeat last year. Dermot
O’Leary and Alex Scott
present the action. TESunday 12 | Viewing guide
Critic’s choice Our Falklands War:
A Frontline Story
BBC2, 9pm
There was a surreal moment
for the soldiers of 2 Para as
they prepared to disembark
for landing on the Falklands;
while they stood aboard the
requisitioned P& O North Sea
ferry Norland, Wagner’s Ride
of the Valkyries blasted
through the ship’s Tannoy
system. But there would be
none of the perfect
choreography of the aerial
sequence from Francis Ford
Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam war
film once they were ashore.
Their apocalypse was now.
Almost exactly 40 years to the
day the conflict ended, ten
veterans of the land war —
which lasted less than a
month — share their stories;
some are speaking about
their experiences in the fight
to retake the islands for the
first time. “I’ve put it in a box
and kept it there till now,” says
former Parachute Regiment
officer Chris Waddington, and
on hearing their stories you
can understand why these
men have sought to forget
those three weeks. Unlike the
rolling news era of the first
Gulf War, there is little
frontline footage of what
happened as British soldiers
clawed their way across
difficult terrain, held by
numerically superior
opponents. The images
inside these men’s heads
amount to the surviving
records of what happened,
and their testimonies are
often harrowing, with vivid
descriptions of bayonet
charges. One of the
contributors, Robert
Lawrence, shares his
experience of taking a bullet
to the head and losing
42 per cent of his brain; his
story is told in greater detail
on BBC4 on Wednesday,
when Colin Firth plays him in
the acclaimed 1988 film
Tumbledown.
Toby Earle