36 saturday review Saturday April 30 2022 | the times
Life After Life
BBC2, 9pmLast week’s episode was a
trying one in this absorbing
adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s
novel. Ursula was raped on the
stairs by an American friend of
her brothers, fell into a deep,
boozy gloom and was even
stopped in her tracks (literally)
when a suicide attempt at a
railway station failed,
preventing her from enjoying a
better chance with another life.
A spiral involving abortion, a
dead-end job and marriage to
the awful Derek Oliphant
(Joshua Hill) promises more
unhappiness this episode,
especially when she later
travels to Germany, where the
Nazis are on the rise. It remains
a sumptuous adaptation. BDBorromini:
The Dark Side
of Baroque
Sky Arts/Now, 9pmThe Sunday Times art critic
Waldemar Januszczak is a
devotee of baroque art and in
particular the work of the
architect Francesco Borromini,
whose palazzos, churches and
altar pieces changed the face
of 17th-century Rome. Helping
to tell the story are recreations
of his life using various actors
in (principally) a series of
studied poses and concluding
with one of him on his
deathbed seeking absolution
for his suicide. It’s an
overblown approach, rather in
keeping with its subject. BDThe Mysterious
Murder of
Ann Heron
Channel 5, 10pmIn August 1990 Peter Heron
returned home from work to
find his wife Ann’s half-naked
body lying on their living-room
carpet, her throat slashed. The
subsequent police
investigation stalled until a
week after the murder when a
newspaper revealed that
Heron had been having an
affair. In 2005 he was charged
with Ann’s murder, before the
case collapsed. In this
programme he gives his
version of the story, alongside
voices less certain of his
version of events. BD10.40 Scotland Tonight 11.05 Julia
Bradbury: Breast Cancer and Me (r)
12.05-3.00am Teleshopping
3.50-5.05 Unwind with STV
● UTV As ITV except: 6.25pm-6.30 Party
Election Broadcast 8.00 Keepers of the
Lough (r) 8.30-9.00 Hidden Northern
Ireland 10.45-11.45 Up Close
● BBC Scotland 7.00pm Live Sportscene:
Championship Play-Off (Kick-off 7. 0 5)
9.00 Nine 10.00 Being Mum with MND
11.00-Midnight Inside Central Station (r)
● S4C 6.00am Cyw 11.15 Fferm Fach (r)
11.30 Pablo (r) 11.45 Deian a Loli (r) 12.00
News 12.05pm Codi Hwyl (r) 12.30 Heno
(r) 1.15 Ffoadur Tim Pel-Droed Maesglas
(r) 1.30 Ffermio (r) 2.00 News 2.05
Prynhawn Da 3.00 News 3.05 Iaith ar
Daith (r) 4.00 Awr Fawr: Sali Mali (r) 4.05
Patrôl Pawennau (r) 4.20 Anifeiliaid Bach
y Byd (r) 4.30 Pablo (r) 4.45 Awyr Iach (r)
5.00 Stwnsh: Gwboi a Twm Twm (r) 5.10
Un Cwestiwn (r) 5.30 Arthur a Chriw y
Ford Gron (r) 5.40 Boom! (r) 5.55 Ffeil
6.00 Celwydd Noeth (r) 6.30 Darllediad
Etholiadol gan Llafur Cymru 6.35 Bex
6.57 News S4C 7.00 Heno 7.30 News
8.00 Pobol y Cwm 8.25 Rownd a Rownd
8.55 News 9.00 Ffit Cymru 10.00 Y
Gyflwynwraig 11.00-11.35 Nyrsys (r)
(r) repeat (SL) In-vision signing● BBC1 Wales As BBC1 except:
6.55pm-7.00 Party Election Broadcast (r)
11.30 Rookie Cops (r) 12.00-1.30am
Love in the Flesh. Double bill (r)
● BBC2 Wales As BBC2 except:
1.45pm First Minister’s Questions 2.35
James Martin: Home Comforts (r) 3.20
Eggheads (r) 3.50 Murder, Mystery and
My Family (r) 4.35 Interior Design
Masters (r) 5.35-6.00 Flog It! (r)
● BBC1 N Ireland As BBC1 except:
9.00pm-10.00 BBC Election Northern
Ireland 2022: The Leaders’ Debate 10.45
Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof 11.45
Noughts + Crosses 12.35am Love in the
Flesh (r) 1.20-6.00 BBC News
● BBC2 N Ireland As BBC2 except:
10.00-10.30pm Belfast’s Victory in
Vienna: A Footballing Odyssey (r)
● BBC1 Scotland As BBC1 except: 6.55pm
Party Election Broadcast (r) 7.00-7.30
River City (r) 11.30 The Edit (r) 11.45 Love
in the Flesh (r) 12.30am Love in the Flesh
(r) 1.15 Celebrity Catchpoint (r) 1.45
Weather 1.50-6.00am BBC News
● ITV Wales As ITV except: 6.25pm-6.30
Party Election Broadcast 8.00 Wales This
Week 8.30-9.00 Coast & Country (r)
● STV As ITV except: 6.25pm-6.30
Party Election Broadcast 8.00-9.00
Happy Birthday Bill 10.30 STV NewsThe Ghost and Mrs Muir (U, 1947)
Talking Pictures TV, 3.55pm
Rex Harrison plays an irascible old seadog with a colourful
turn of phrase, and Gene Tierney is the unflappable young
widow who moves to the coast to escape her in-laws. They
fall in love. Yet what makes this odd couple even odder is
that Harrison’s character is the ghost of the former owner of the
cottage in which Tierney lives. Joseph Mankiewicz directs a
film that effortlessly switches between gentle comedy and
pathos, melodrama and fantasy. It’s a beguiling charmer.
Despite being set in London and on the English coast and
having mostly British actors, the film was actually shot in
California and along the central Pacific coastline. (104min)
Chris BennionFilms of the day
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (15, 1974)
Film4, 1.25am
This fondly regarded hostage thriller was remade in 2009 with
John Travolta and Denzel Washington, a decent enough film, but
one that threw into sharp relief just what a likeable pair of actors
Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, above, were, and what a grimy
backdrop New York was in the 1970s. Shaw is the leader of a team
of professional criminals taking hostage a carriage of a subway
train in New York. They want $1 million in one hour, or passengers
will start to be killed. But how will they make their escape? It’s a bit
like a forerunner of Speed and a touch pulpy, but Matthau has a
sardonic appeal as the negotiator. The criminal team’s aliases,
named after colours (Mr Blue, Mr Grey etc), were famously copied
by Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs. (104min) James JacksonNoughts + Crosses
BBC1, 10.40pmThe second episode of Malorie
Blackman’s bestselling novel
that imagines an alternative
world history in which white
people live under the yoke of
often brutal black oppressors
finds our interracial lovers
facing a dilemma. The white (or
“Nought”) Callum (Jack Rowan)
and the privileged politician’s
daughter and “Cross” girlfriend
Sephy (Masali Baduza) need to
leave Albion if they are to have
a decent life together. But with
Sephy’s father, the hardline
prime minister Kamal Hadley
(Paterson Joseph), desperate to
find her and punish Callum —
and with violence gripping
the country — it’s not an easy
task. BDRegional programmes
Catch
up
The Thief, His Wife and
the Canoe
ITV Hub
Chris Lang’s
four-part
dramatisation of
the stranger-
than-fiction
story of
“Canoe
Man”
turned
out to
be a
gripping
drama. It
marked 20
years since
John Darwin“disappeared” while canoeing
in the North Sea. Eddie Marsan
plays Darwin, who was
beleaguered by money worries
and the sense that he deserved
better. He coerced his wife,
Anne (Monica Dolan, below
with Marsan), to join him in an
outlandish scheme that
involved faking his
death, claiming the
insurance, knocking
a hole through
his bedroom
wall so he
could live
secretly in the
next-door
bedsit, and
eventually
heading off
for Panama
under a
false name.
Joe ClayTuesday 3 | Viewing guide
Critic’s choice
Jay Blades: No Place Like Home
Channel 5, 9pm
The lockdown success of The
Repair Shop made Jay Blades,
furniture restorer and all-
round good egg, a household
name. Or at least one big
enough to present stand-
alone programmes like this in
which he travels back to his
childhood streets for
reflection and a natter with
the locals. Home for Blades in
his earliest years was the good
old East End of London, a
place often viewed through
rose-tinted spectacles. “I
thought we were rich,” Blades
says. “We had sweeties, we
had time.” He revisits the
home he was taken to as a
very young child by his
mother (whom his dad “left
high and dry”) and says that
he hasn’t returned to the
scenes of his earliest life for
34 years (thus leaving us to
speculate on why). Then it’s
on to the council estate where
he grew up, close to the centre
of the Kray empire. The model
and hairdresser Maureen
Flanagan, who knew the twins
and organised their funerals,
offers the all-too-familiar talk
about them being largely
decent and community-
minded people. Then there
are more old friends and
gazing on ordinary-seeming
streets that clearly mean
more to him than they do to
us. This programme works
best when Blades is
discovering things he didn’t
know — the fact that bombs
were dropped by Germany
during the First World War
and that Hackney was once a
suburb where people who
benefited from the slave trade
lived. The clashes between
Jewish people and fascists at
Ridley Road market also
introduces us to a veteran of
these battles, 91-year-old
Jules Konopinski, who
is a particularly interesting
and engaging voice.
Ben Dowell