• TV, FILM & RADIO
THE LATEST DOCUMENTARIES, BLOCKBUSTERS AND PERIOD DRAMAS
ONE TO WATCH
It’s a family affair
Who Do You Think You Are?
BBC One, starts Thursday 26 May
It’s easy to understand why Who Do You Think You Are? has enjoyed such longevity. Here is a series that combines our collective fascination with looking beyond the public personas of those in the media spotlight with family history, equally fascinating in that it’s tied up with a sense of belonging.
Nevertheless, it’s still impressive that the show has racked up 19 series, with the latest episodes presumably filmed while the Covid-19 pandemic was still impacting heavily on work and, in particular, travel. It’s a longevity that reflects in part how the series has evolved down the years as research techniques have become more sophisticated.
That said, the heart of Who Do You Think You Are? lies in familial relationships and the way the past plays into the present. This latter idea is to the fore in the opening episode, which features comedian and former Bake Off host, Sue Perkins. It’s in part a moving story of refugees forced by conflict to flee across European borders.
There are five episodes in the series, which continues after the long Jubilee weekend with Richard Osman, bestselling crime novelist, quiz show inventor and younger brother of Suede bassist Matt.
It’s an episode that highlights Osman’s strong bond with his maternal grandfather, Frederick Wright. Frederick, we learn, was a military man who had a tough start in life and who saw education as a way to open up opportunities. Because of this, it was especially important for Osman that his late grandfather was able to see him graduate from the University of Cambridge.
In other episodes, Matt Lucas of Little Britain and Shooting Stars fame charts Jewish roots, an episode in which the Holocaust looms large. Actor Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland, Line of Duty) traces her family’s origins in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Death in Paradise star Ralf Little sees himself as deeply Mancunian, but his research takes in naval history and forebears who worked in the Welsh mines.
TV
Guns at the ready
Silverton Siege
Netflix, streaming now
As the 1980s began, the legislative dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid system still lay more than a decade in the future. While the African National Congress (ANC) led the political campaign against a system of institutionalised racial segregation designed to favour the minority white population, there was also armed resistance. This was centred on the ANC’s military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which was founded by Nelson Mandela in the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.
Inevitably, taking on the South African regime directly was an undertaking fraught with danger, as the feature-length Silverton Siege dramatises. It’s a story based on events that played out on 25 January 1980, when a trio of MK fighters were sent on a mission to sabotage a petrol depot. Tailed by the police, they took shelter in a bank. Here, they held customers and staff members hostage, and the siege that gives the film its name ensued.
Among other demands, the fighters wanted the release of Mandela, but their standoff with the authorities eventually ended, without giving too much away, with bloodshed and tragedy.
Silverton Siege takes some liberties with the historical timeline as events play out in action-thriller style, but that’s certainly forgivable considering how many incidents from South Africa’s recent past even now remain comparatively unknown outside the country. Thabo Rametsi, Noxolo Dlamini and Stefan Erasmus play the MK trio, while Arnold Vosloo portrays the cop charged with negotiating with them and trying to ensure nobody is killed as the situationes calates
TV
Unconventional lives
Gentleman Jack
BBC One and BBC iPlayer, on TV and streaming now
If the first season of Gentleman Jack seemed largely concerned with Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) battling the social and sexual mores of a narrow society, the new season seems intent on widening out the story. Most obviously, there’s the daring honeymoon taken by Lister and Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle), and their determination to combine their estates and build a life together.
But whatever is happening, the gift of writer Sally Wainwright (Last Tango in Halifax, Happy Valley) for characterisation is as vivid as ever, evidenced by the introduction of new characters such as Lister’s outrageous former lover, Isabella ‘Tib’ Norcliffe (Joanna Scanlan). As before, the drama draws extensively on the real-life diaries of Anne Lister (1791–1840), who has been called “the first modern lesbian”.
RADIO
Overcoming adversity
Ceaușescu’s Children
BBC Radio 4, Monday 13 June
In December 1989, the Romanian people overthrew the hated dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. In the aftermath of the revolution, the world learnt about the terrible conditions many in the country had to endure – and particularly those who lived in its orphanages. Under Ceaușescu, who thought the Romanian population should double, birth control and abortions were outlawed, and incentives were introduced to encourage women to have more children. But many parents couldn’t afford to look after their offspring, and the country’s state-run orphanages began to fill up.
Conditions in these institutions were often terrible, with filthy children left to fend for themselves, and shocked the world when they were revealed in news reports. The actor Ionica Adriana, who now lives in North Yorkshire, spent her first two and a half years in an orphanage, located in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania. How different might her life have been had she stayed in the country of her birth rather than being adopted by British parents?
In a one-off documentary, Adriana returns to Cluj-Napoca. In part, it’s a journey into the past as Adriana considers the troubled history of Romania’s orphanages and meets her godmother, Livia; but she also looks at the state of childcare and protection in Romania today (the country banned international adoptions in 2004).
FILM
Majestic life
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts
In cinemas from Friday 27 May
Shortly before he died in late 2021, director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, The Duke) completed his final feature, a documentary charting the remarkable life and times of Queen Elizabeth II. “She’s the Mona Lisa, instantly recognisable, and yet elusively and perpetually unknowable,” Michell wrote on a website for the film. “She’s more famous than The Beatles. She’s a Queen in a castle in a fairy story. Or the Queen in a hard-hat opening a recycling factory.”
These are words that capture the extraordinary sense of the Queen being a constant and multifaceted presence in our lives. His documentary, rather than offering a conventional narrative history, explores this idea. There’s also a sense of playful irreverence. “We grew up loving the Queen,” notes Sir Paul McCartney in the trailer. “To us teenagers, she was a babe.”
As you would expect, with a long weekend to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee set aside in the national calendar in early June, the BBC will be covering the celebrations extensively. Among the documentary offerings, Archive on 4: Encounters with Elizabeth (BBC Radio 4, Saturday 4 June) looks particularly intriguing as it charts the Queen’s life via her interactions with some of the more interesting characters she has met down the years.
TAP HERE for an A-Z of Queen Elizabeth II‘s life and reign
TV
In the moment
I Was There
Sky History, starts Tuesday 17 May
If only we could go back in time to see what really happened as the events that shaped our world played out. As yet, this is impossible, but a new Sky History series attempts to imagine what it might be like as its host, the actor Theo Wilson (pictured), ‘time-travels’ to pivotal moments of the past.
Wilson, it turns out, is a history enthusiast whose interest in the topic was partly inspired by admiration for his grandfather, one of the pioneering Tuskegee Airmen of World War II.