19 December 2021 93THE BEST TV FROM NOW TV AND BEYOND... NEW YEAR’S DAY
McCartney 3, 2, 1/
The Beatles — Get Back
The Beatles’ Let It Be sessions
began at the Twickenham
Film Studios on January 1,
1969, so why not spend
today watching McCartney
3, 2, 1 (Apple+) and see the
great man being expertly
cross-questioned by the
record producer Rick
Rubin. Then you can devote
tomorrow to all eight hours
of Peter Jackson’s Get Back
(Disney+), so it feels like you
are an actual witness to the
sessions and the subsequent
rooftop concert. You begin
as an eavesdropper but
gradually lose yourself in
the squabbling and the
camaraderie, before getting
caught up in the entire
thrilling adventure of it all.
Don’t listen to the naysayers.
This was one of the true TV
highlights of the year.
Andrew MaleNew Year, new tasks (C4, 9pm)ON DEMAND
The Great (Starzplay)
The harsh critical response
to the first season of Tony
McNamara’s “occasionally
true” retelling of Catherine
the Great’s rise to power has
resulted in a rethink, and
the result is this brilliantly
enjoyable second instalment.
Elle Fanning continues to
The Secret Service (Britbox)
This is the lost gem in the
pantheon of Gerry and Sylvia
Anderson’s sci-fi series. A 1969
spy-drama mix of live action
and puppetry, it stars the
eccentric comedian Stanley
Unwin (in live and puppet
form) as a Christian vicar and
secret agent who uses his
trademark brand of gibberish
doublespeak (Unwinese) to
hoodwink foreign spies.
Andrew Maleastonish as Russia’s 18th-
century empress regnant,
as does Phoebe Fox as her
acerbic maid, but now every
subsidiary character seems to
have upped their game and
the result is a Beluga-black
satire on power, privilege
and costume dramas that
spits out the pithy bon mots
and historical in-jokes at an
almost obscene pace. Critics
are good people, we really
are. Occasionally.Just desert: Jamie Dornan knows where he is but not how he got there (BBC1, 9pm)The Tourist (BBC1, 9pm)
Jamie Dornan is (we are led
to believe) the tourist of
the title in Harry and Jack
Williams’ gripping and funny
six-parter. Their dues having
been paid on The Missing
and Baptiste, the brothers
secured a blockbuster budget
to capitalise on sun-bleached
locations in the Australian
outback, teaming the visual
language of the western with
a magpie plot that references
everything from Fargo, Duel,
The Bourne Identity and The
Searchers in episode one
alone. Dornan is a treat as an
amnesiac Brit, “the Man”,
demonstrating the grumpily
confused appeal evident in
his chat-show appearances
as his character wakes in
hospital after a skirmish with
a lorry in the desert. Danielle
Macdonald shines as a
helpful policewoman.
Helen StewartTaskmaster’s New Year
Treat (C4, 9pm)
If you don’t have the energy
for New Year’s Day parlour
games, watching other people
caper foolishly is quite the
tonic as the dregs of the
holiday season drain away.
Greg Davies and Alex Horne
welcome Adrian Chiles, Lady
Leshurr, Claudia Winkleman
and Baroness Warsi to the
Taskmaster arena (previous
contestant Alan Davies is
the studio representative for
the unwell Johnnie Peacock,
caught on tape). As ever, the
show steers a course between
charming and preposterous,
with challenges involving
eggs, vinegar and “unwieldly
shiny things”. Forget the hair
of the dog: this is good for
what ails you.
Victoria Segal
New Year’s Day Concert
From Vienna (BBC2,
10.15am/BBC4, 7pm)
Daniel Barenboim conducts the
Vienna Philharmonic in the
annual concert in the Golden
Hall of the Musikverein.
Broadcast to 90 countries,
the programme again consists
of classical easy-listening
pieces by the Strauss family
and their contemporaries.Doctor Who (BBC1, 7pm)
The Daleks return tonight in
a special that serves as a kind
of coda to series 13 (not really
13 though, is it?). The Doctor
( Jodie Whittaker) and friends
find themselves doubly
trapped, both in a time-loop
and in a storage facility, where
they and characters played
by Aisling Bea and Adjani
Salmon come under attack.Harry Potter 20th
Anniversary — Return To
Hogwarts (Sky Max, 8pm)
Marking the anniversary of
the first film, Daniel Radcliffe,
Rupert Grint and Emma Watson
reunite with its director, Chris
Columbus, and a host of stars
in a look back at the making of
the series. Apparently absent is
JK Rowling, without whom ...
John DugdaleCRITICS’ CHOICE
It was 53 years ago
tomorrow ...
Downton Abbey
(ITV, 8.30pm)
It was first seen in cinemas,
but this spin-off will be quite
at home on the TV channel
where Julian Fellowes’s
country-house drama series
began: it amounts to a
bumper edition of the usual
goings-on. The regular cast
(including Hugh Bonneville
and Elizabeth McGovern)
reunite; a bonus star, Imelda
Staunton, turns up; and life at
Downton is thrown into polite
turmoil by the news that
George V is coming to visit.
Dir: Michael Engler (2019)Heat (Sky Cinema Greats,
1.15pm/11.35pm)
Michael Mann’s crime thriller
is almost three hours long,
but its story — a battle of wits
between a daring bank robber
(Robert De Niro) and a zealous
cop (Al Pacino) — is so well
told that it speeds by. The
characters are vividly drawn
and the action scenes are
big and relentless. (1995)A right royal shindig (ITV, 8.30pm)FILM CHOICE
The Croods — A New Age
(Sky Cinema Premiere,
10.30am/6pm)
Released seven years after
The Croods, the prehistoric
family’s second movie caters
to no obvious demand but
it does offer lively cartoon
action. The clan meet a
slightly more advanced family,
the Bettermans, who have
Stone Age versions of modern
conveniences. Naturally, this
means the film can apply its
up-to-date animation methods
to the kind of jokes pioneered
by The Flintstones. Dir: Joel
Crawford (2020)The Sound Of Music
(BBC1, 2.20pm)
Four years after receiving an
Oscar as one of the directors
of the classic West Side Story
adaptation, Robert Wise won
in the same category with
another musical: this tale
of an Austrian governess
( Julie Andrews) shepherding
children through the rise of
Nazism. It may be saccharine,
but it’s still a tremendously
well-staged film. (1965)
Edward Porter