David Farnor | On 06, Oct 2015

From Sliding Doors to A Syrian Love Story, BBC iPlayer’s movie collection alone is worth clicking onto this week, but the site is as diverse as ever in its streaming line-up, from a 1970s sitcom and a cartoon series about a secret agent mouse to an insightful lecture on the nature of art itself.

We review the best TV shows and films currently available on BBC iPlayer:

TV

The Kennedys

Katherine Parkinson continues her quest to take over our TV screens in this new BBC sitcom – and thank goodness she is. Bringing an expert sense of comic timing, with just the right shade of domestic ennui, she elevates what could be a hackneyed, dull sitcom about a family in the 1970s into a pleasantly jolly 30 minutes. Jokes mostly involve her moustached husband not knowing what lasagne is, but the cast go at it with charming energy, with Lucy Hutchison as the daughter making for a likeable narrator.

Available until: 11th November (Episode 1)

Photo: BBC/Gary Moyes

Asian Provocateur

Romesh Ranganathan is the latest to tackle the now-prolific genre of Comedian Travels Abroad. But the usual fish-out-of-water schtick is given a personal touch by the fact that he’s heading to his parents’ homeland of Sri Lanka – because his mum tells him to – to meet his Uncle Thiru and learn about his heritage. Ranganathan hasn’t always been involved in the best projects, but he’s a naturally funny guy, something that the format allows to come through without beating you over the head with it.

Available until: 4th November (Episode 1)

Photo: BBC/Rumpus Media/Benjamin Green

The Face of Britain by Simon Schama

Simon Schama teams up with the National Portrait Gallery for this new series examining the paintings on display. Covering areas such as “Love” and Power”, the historian brings his signature presenting style to the subject, walking through the gallery halls like he’s just been invited round their for dinner and has come prepared with a smattering of anecdotes. With talk of how we attach ourselves to faces as a key part of human evolution and the use of portraits to reinforce or undermine authority, it’s hard not to imagine inviting him back for another course.

Photo: BBC/Oxford Film and TV

The John Peel Lecture 2015 with Brian Eno

Listening to Brian Eno talk for an hour may not sound like riveting television, but the selection of the music guru to deliver this year’s John Peel Lecture turns out to be an inspired decision. The pop star waxes lyrical, stepping aside any potential self-aggrandisement that accompanies these events to deliver some insightful – nay, inspirational – comments on the nature of culture, on playing and learning, before arriving at surely one of the best definitions of art to be recorded no camera: “Art is what we don’t have to do,” he suggests. That alone is worth tuning in for. You know, not that you have to.

Available until: 1st November

Photo: BBC/Kieron Mcarron

Danger Mouse

The BBC once again proves a safe pair of hands for rebooting your childhood favourites, as the all-new Danger Mouse introduces cutting edge tech (goodbye, eye patch; hello, iPatch) but sticks to an old-school formula of silly voices, non-stop puns and an extremely villainous toad. The opening double-bill proves narrative isn’t the show’s strong point, but the promise of more chaos squeezed into 11-minute chunks of zany Bond parodies is enough to raise anyone’s eyebrows as high as Penfold’s.

Available until: 28th October (Episode 1)

Photo: BBC / FremantleMedia Limited

The Naked Choir

Between Glee and Pitch Perfect, a cappella has been having something of a moment in recent years. If the glossy production values have turned you off, though, Gareth Malone’s return with The Naked Choir is for you. Picking a selection of local groups to train up, the realistic obstacles facing our singers – drowning out the soloist, not counting rhythm – are a welcome change to Hollywood fiction, while the sincere sense of teamwork (one Stratford group allows anyone to join, resulting in a pleasingly diverse bunch) makes the belting arrangements even sweeter on the ears. Forget The X Factor: this is real singing entertainment, right down to its distinctly non-prime time presenter.

Available until: 24th October (Episode 1)

BBC/Twenty Twenty Brighton/Mark Johnson

Patagonia

To say the BBC has delivered another stunning wildlife series might seem the obvious thing to say, but Patagonia is exactly that. Soaring over the landscape before zooming in on tiny roads and hectic hummingbirds, Tuppence Stone’s camerawork takes your breath away. The programme’s secret weapon, though, is narrator Santiago Cabrera, whose correct pronunciation and soft tones could make a probiotic yoghurt sound attractive.

Available until: 5th November (Episode 2)

Photo: BBC NHU/Anthony Pyper

Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing

Who gave birth to the modern computer? This BBC documentary makes a convincing case for the daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace. Tracing her life and her friendship with computer daddy Charles Babbage, Dr. Hannah Fry proves a likeable presence, who never feels over-coached in presentation or bored by her well-researched subject matter. Shots of an early computer and its cog-based addition are hypnotic, while Lovelace’s later slide into a gambling problem provides a poignant contrast to her life’s underappreciated achievement.

Available until: 17th October

Photo: BBC

6 Degrees of Separation

Professor Brian Cox takes time out from straddling volcanoes and gazing at the stars to try something new: hosting a panel show. Joined by Ben Miller and Hugh Dennis, the result is a bizarre combination of Mythbusters, QI and the annual Christmas lectures, as demonstrations and experiments join the usual question-and-answer rounds. In an age of Mock the Week and other inane comedy offerings, it’s an unexpected treat to see a game show trying to do something different. Especially when it involves custard, an egg and a cherry picker. Cox’s hair is, of course, immaculate.

Available until: 19th October

Photo: BBC/Emilie Sandie

The Gamechangers

“Was Basil Brush busy? What exactly is this random, made up bollocks?” That’s the reaction of RockStar, makers of Grand Theft Auto, to this one-off BBC drama that continues the Beeb’s digital-themed season. Daniel Radcliffe stars as head designer Sam Houser, opposite Bill Paxton as an evangelical lawyer gunning for the violent video game’s head. Radcliffe is excellent, portraying his geek as part-Mark Zuckerberg revolutionary and part-misunderstood genius, but if the movie never reaches the depths of The Social Network, it does manage to capture some of the debate surrounding GTA’s contrversy: one sequence that sees a young man shoot up a police station is shot in the style of the game, a chilling piece of filmmaking that, despite RockStar’s claims of inaccuracy, stays with you.

Available until: 15th October

Photo: BBC Scotland © 2015; Moonlighting NNN Productions (Pty) Limited: African Photographic C.C.

Girls Can Code

The title of BBC Three’s new show may well illicit a sigh or a murmur of surprise from unenlightened audiences, but this is a fantastic piece of telly that takes a bunch of young girls and proves to them that hell yes, they can. From a games studio in London to an electronic fashion designer, Radio 1’s Alice Levine presents proof that coding can be used in all kinds of situations, before – with the help of Hassle.com’s Alex Depledge – encouraging the youngsters to make their own computer game. The result is as delightfully immature and innovative as you could hope for. The fact that these talents are surrounded by successful female role models, the kind of people who never seem to appear on your living room screen, only adds to the value of a worthwhile 60 minutes. By the end, there’s only one possible response to the emphatic titles. Girls Can Code. Well, duh.

Available until: 20th October

Photo: BBC/Nutshell TV/Dan Hall

Doctor Foster

Suranne Jones and Bertie Carvel? The cast list for Doctor Foster sounds like a match made in heaven. The show even opens with a corker of a sex scene, as see Doctor Foster and her husband in full marital flow. But there’s trouble in paradise – and, after finding some lip balm and a blonde hair on her hubbie’s coat, our normally rational brunette becomes increasingly besotted with the idea that he might be having an affair. Jones is superb as the determined amateur detective, just intense enough to make you doubt her reliability, while Carvel smiles with enough gloss to make you wonder whether he’s putting it on. Suspicions swing to and fro between the couple, leaving you uncertain who to believe or who to sympathise with. And that’s only after the first hour. The stage is set for a compelling drama. We prescribe that you watch all five episodes.

Available until: Friday 9th October (Episode 1)

Photo: Drama Republic/Des Willie

An Inspector Calls

The BBC continues its run of literary adaptations with this take on JB Priestley’s play, an oldie but a goodie that would surely creak under the weight of its own age and familiarity. But dusted down by the Beeb in an age of austerity, housing shortages and ever-expanding food banks, the socialist fury of the titular detective implicating a rich family (led by the repulsively snooty Ken Stott and Miranda Richardson) in the death of a poor girl (sympathetic waif Sophie Rundle) feels like it could have been written yesterday. Those familiar with the text – it’s taught widely at GCSE level – may feel like they’re being lectured, but this is a speech worth hearing. Delivered with panache by a fantastically steely David Thewlis, the result is so rousing it could easily have starred Jeremy Corbyn.

Available until: Tuesday 13th October

Photo: BBC Pictures/Drama Republic

Beck

“You look haggard.” “Thanks.” That’s Martin Beck, your new favourite Scandinavian detective. A haggard Scandinavian detective? It’s par for the course for Nordic noir, but so is high quality – and this series of standalone dramas, based on the Swedish books, confidently exceeds an already high standard. Peter Haber, who was memorably creepy in the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo film, plays the gruff cop, who is first faced with a person being buried alive – the kind of horrific crime that doesn’t need subtitles to be effective. Mikael Persbrandt as his unapologetically confrontational colleague, Gunvald Larsson, is the icing on the kladdkaka.

Available until: Monday 12th October (Episode 1)

Photo: BBC/Nordisk Film Production AB & Filmlance International AB/Bengt Wanselius

Boy Meets Girl

The first UK sitcom to feature a transgender character, Boy Meets Girl is the kind of show that could – and arguably should – be trumpeted as welcome game-changer. The show, though, is actually quite old-fashioned in its approach, not to sexuality but to humour: jokes range from the well observed “I was born with a penis” revelation during a romantic dinner to overly familiar older relatives delivering cosy, if tired, gags. But if that leaves this far from on par with Amazon’s Transparent, there’s pleasure to be found in its earthy, comfortable attitude to its subject: the moment where Rebecca Root’s Judy explains to Harry Hepple’s Leo that she was born in the wrong body is an unexpectedly tender piece of TV.

Available until: Monday 12th October (Episode 2)
Photo: BBC/Diverse

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Jed Mercurio’s take on DH Lawrence’s steamy novel is a surprisingly chaste affair, as Holliday Grainger’s haughty Lady C gets off with groundskeeper Oliver Mellors. Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden tones down the language (“bottom” is the word of the day, rather than anything rude, thank you very much), just one of many changes to the text that left some fans fuming online at the lack of rumpy-pumpy. The biggest crime of passion is the dialogue, which, thanks to some colourful accents, leaves you closer to titters than titillated. The strength of Mercurio’s script, though, lies in its down-to-earth tone, complete with James Norton as the surprisingly sympathetic, disabled Sir Clifford Chatterley. “It is the living together day to day not the sleeping together” that defines love, he argues at one point. This TV drama makes a good case for it.

Available until: Tuesday 6th October

Main Photo: BBC PICTURES/HARTSWOOD FILMS

Fried

This sitcom about Croydon’s worst fried chicken shop (Seriously Fried Chicken) takes full flight after being commissioned on the basis of its Comedy Feeds pilot last year. The strength of the show remains the store’s incompetent manager, Mary, a part played with endearing desperation by the excellent Katy Wix. She takes centre stage, as she goes undercover to find out who’s been complaining about her to head office. There are deep fried laughs in the reaction of her colleagues to her ineffective costume, building to a strong final gag, but with a disappointingly familiar romantic subplot and an uneven role for the token rowdy sidekick (amusing when in his mascot costume, less so when left to deliver stock rude statements), a lot of this first episode rests on how funny you find a woman wearing a fake moustache. Give this time to flap its wings: there are promising nuggets to be found.

Available until: 13th October (Episode 2)

Photo: BBC / Two Brothers Pictures Limited / Bwark Productions Limited

Top Coppers

“Nobody messes with the McCrane family,” warns cockney crime boss Harry McCrane to his newly assembled henchmen. A hand goes up. “Yes, Sandra?” He’s just taken over an ice cream factory. The problem? They were already making a lot of money with the ice cream. Drugs, on the other hand, are a lot of hassle.

It’s exactly the kind of villain you can expect to encounter Top Coppers, BBC Three’s new comedy series. Created by Andy Kinnear and Cein McGillicuddy (also on directing duties), the show spoofs 1970s cop thrillers like it’s going out of fashion.

In many ways, of course, it is: comedies these days don’t do slapstick and silliness in the quite the same way. But the cast are more than up for it; Steen Raskopoulous is hilariously gormless as star cop John Mahogany and John Kearns is even more so as his sidekick, Mitch Rust. Both are dim, good at deadpan delivery and even more ginger than their names suggest. Their policing of Justice City, led by an amusingly over-the-top chief – the lover of another brother’s mother – recalls Police Squad! with its rapid-fire punchlines and constant undermining of every plot point. It’s not quite on a par with Frank Drebin, but three decades on, this wears the comparison on its sleeve with impressive attitude.

Available until: 4th November (Episode 1)
Photo: BBC PICTURES/Rough Cut

The Great British Bake Off

Pudding trumps bread any day of the week and Bake Off doesn’t disappoint, with an array of mouth-watering cheesecakes (cream soda, anyone?), entertaining meringue dilemmas and some creme brûlée catastrophes. Paul Hollywood is scathingly blunt as he and Mary wobble over the custardy, creamy chaos. All that and there’s still the question of whether Ian can win Star Baker for the third week in a row. Six seasons in and this format is still as sweet as ever.

Music Box with Guy Garvey

The Elbow’s likeable frontman throws the curtains wide on a new music series exclusive to iPlayer, which sees Garvey share and discuss artists that he is most excited about. The series will run every other week for six episodes, with the first living up to its promise of introducing audiences to new music through its focus on Here We Go Magic. The exclusive premiere of the video for Falling – from their new album Be Small – is an apt coup, with Garvey providing the kind of amusing and insightful commentary that listeners to his Radio 6 Music show will be familiar with. Space for archive music from Radiohead brings diversity to the line-up, while the sub-30-minute runtime makes this an easy fit into your commute. Most impressive, though, is the BBC’s Playlister, which enables you to add tracks to a music playlist – a feature that, while not always relevant to the Beeb’s catch-up TV content, really comes into its own. Much like YouTube’s links to purchase audio from its videos, it’s the kind of innovative touch the BBC is good at – and could signal a strong future for IPlayer in the music VOD world. One day like this a fortnight will see us right.

Available until: June 2016

Photo: BBC / Dean Chalkley

Matt Berry Does… Summer Holidays

Matt Berry’s series of topical shorts continue to make us chuckle, even as the subject matter becomes more and more arbitrary. His response to the topic is to deliver his most surreal voice over and footage combo yet – but even if the topic and its follow-through feel more haphazard than in the past, there’s something undeniably hilarious about Matt Berry’s voice over the top of screaming fish. Long may that stay true.

Available until: June 2016

Photo: BBC iPlayer

Comedy Feeds

The BBC’s latest season of comedy pilots has arrived and it’s a consistently hilarious batch. Highlights include warped game show spoof Funz and Gamez, complete with depressed host and a production team that breaks into their contestants’ homes to steal prizes, and sketch show People Like Us, which just might be the best ensemble sketch programme since Big Train. Elsewhere, the return of a wayward daughter from university to her rural home is a delightfully original piece of comedy in an age where many sitcoms have become bland and familiar. These feeds should come with a warning – because they’ll leave you hungry for more. (Read our full review).

Available until: June 2016.

Photo: BBC

My Jihad

As BBC iPlayer’s Original Drama Shorts return for another season, one of 2014’s best, My Jihad, returns as a miniseries of three 15-minute films. The first introduced us to Fahmida (Anjli Mohindra) and Nazir (Hamza Jeetooa), two single Muslims who crossed paths at an unsuccessful speed-dating night. Picking up events one month later, this is a universal exploration of love in modern Britain that packs in twice as much warmth and wit as most 30-minute shows do in a whole season.

Read our full review.

Available until: 2016

Original Drama Shorts

BBC iPlayer continues to prove a platform for new talent with its latest bunch of shorts. From a moving demonstration of isolation and connection in an online age to a darkly funny – and unpredictable – story of female love and family loyalty, this is an impressively versatile collection of stories that are more than worth spending time with.

Read our full review.

Available until: June 2016

Matt Berry Does… Father’s Day

Matt Berry proves once again that almost anything he says is funny, mostly because of the way he says it. After several excellent comedy shorts for BBC iPlayer, the IT Crowd and Garth Marenghi star now has his own series of short films titled “Matt Berry Does…”. After a profile of the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race earlier in the year, he turns his anthropological gaze to Father’s Day, providing a history of parenthood that dates all the way back to our primate ancestors. Alongside the bizarre and silly turns this spoof documentary takes, not to mention the vaguely satirical swipes at the failed evolution of men, the highlight is simply Berry using the phrase “UK daddy”, something that he repeats over and over again. It doesn’t stop being funny. This is the second of six “Matt Berry Does…” specials. Roll on the other four.

Available until: June 2016

Clangers

“This is the Earth, our home…” begins Michael Palin at the start of each episode of The Clangers. “A tiny, wet planet, lost and alone. Lost in the vast silence of space…”

It’s not the introduction that older viewers will be used to, but it’s immediately clear that the Beeb’s updated version of Oliver Postgate’s classic has no intention of rebooting the show for modern audiences. In a year where Gerry Anderson’s equally loved series was given a CGI makeover, new characters and a different back-story, The Clangers feels like the antithesis to ITV’s Thunderbirds.

Palin’s avuncular tones are the perfect fit for The Clanger’s reassuring voice-over, which rejoices in the small details of our creatures’ lives. The result is something that feels as timeless as ever, because it doesn’t alter what made The Clangers special in the first place: its ability to present imagination as the most natural thing in the universe. Read our full review.

Photo: BBC/Coolabi, Smallfilms and Peter Firmin

Women Who Spit

“Your shabby, slipped-stitch mistakes make you miraculous,” spits Vanessa Kisuule in a short poem urging women to stop shrinking back and to take up space. It’s one of countless brilliant lines you’ll hear during this series of short films, which see female poets tackle topics facing young people today.

Cecilia Knapp’s explanation of why she writes is inspiring, Deanna Rodger’s look at those forced off the street is provocative, while Jemima Foxtrot’s double-performed examination of confidence and doubt is an entertaining and powerful reminder of the importance of self over surface. Each are excellent performers, leaving your tongue tripping back over syllables to savour their taste, but keep Megan Beech’s passionate cry for more women on our TV screens until last: after the previous four fantastic compositions, you’ll be hard pushed not to agree.

Important and urgent, this collection shows just how valuable BBC iPlayer can be as a platform to voices that should be heard more often.

Available until: May 2016

Photo: BBC/Thomas Caron Delion

Movies

Sliding Doors

Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah are on irresistably charming form in one of the 90s’ best rom-coms. The fact that it involves parallel universes is a bonus.

Available until: 8th October

Hunky Dory

Minnie Driver leads a charming ensemble cast (including Aneurin Barnard) in this comedy drama about a school production of The Tempest in the 1970s – with contemporary music. A period Shakespearean high-school rock musical? This is hunky dory, indeed.

Available until: 11th October

Mystery Road

Australian crime thriller. A murdered girl is found under a bridge on a remote road and an indigenous detective, recently returned home after years in the city, gets the case.

Available until: 26th October

Journey Into Fear

A nightmarish tale of espionage and treachery in Istanbul, as an American munitions expert goes on the run from the Gestapo during the Second World War. Orson Welles, who acts the role of a corrupt chief of the Turkish secret police, wrote the script with co-star Joseph Cotten. Adapted from a novel by Eric Ambler.

Available until: 25th October

A Syrian Love Story

Sean McAllister’s award-winning documentary, telling the poignant story of a family torn apart by the Assad regime in Syria, may be the edited down Storyville version of the movie, but it is no less powerful.

Available until: 29th October

Bitter Lake

Adam Curtis’ bizarre, surreal, brilliant provocative documentary deconstructs the media’s presentation of politics and history with a dizzying complexity and a dark sense of humour. At over two hours, it’s a daunting watch, but an important one – not least because it showcases the potential for BBC iPlayer as a platform for bold, experimental work.

Available until: 2016

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