The best films and TV shows on BBC iPlayer (31st January 2016)
David Farnor | On 31, Jan 2016
We review the best TV shows and films currently available on BBC iPlayer. (Click here to skip to our reviews of the best movies on BBC iPlayer.)
The Great Sport Relief Bake Off
Cakes. Mary Berry. An uplifting tone that inspires and encourages anyone to bake. It’s hard to imagine how GBBO could get better. The Great Sport Relief Bake Off, though, found an answer: add David James. The former England national goalkeeper, to put it simply, is not the world’s best baker – but he’s one of the best bakers to watch in action. Pausing, staring at things with a confused expression, throwing chicken into an oven with casual abandon. It’s a masterclass in how not to behave in a kitchen. He’s joined by other celebrities of varying degrees of incompetence, a mix that means, for once, almost everyone is making mistakes: the technical round involving choux pastry is a 10-minute car crash in a tent, with Berry and Hollywood having to eat the results proving excruciatingly hilarious. But Mel’s gentle hosting and the show’s relentlessly kind tone means that the laughter never feels X Factor-like cruel. The result is possibly the best episode of Bake Off ever.
Samantha Cameron, meanwhile, glides through with consistent competence, but cancels out the impressive skill with an absence of any personality. James, though, has an abundance of character. His solution for cooking a cake in the middle is either genius or dumb – can someone give him his own cookery show now please?
Available until: 29th February (Episode 1)
Photo: BBC/Love Productions
Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar
This docudrama tells the true story of a 14-year-old schoolboy who was lured to death by a stranger he met online while gaming. The programme blends animated reenactments and live action interviews in an attempt to highlight the boundary between real life and the dangers of the virtual world. It’s a technique that doesn’t always work, but there is no doubt that this is an important story to share, particularly in families with younger viewers – and the subject is handled with sensitivity and respect.
Available until: 27th February
Photo: Rare Day Ltd
The Real Marigold Hotel
A bunch of celebrities travel to India, inspired by The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? It’s hard to imagine a worst premise for a programme, but against all the odds, The Real Marigold Hotel emerges as a likeable piece of telly. The secret is in the group of participants, from Roy Walker to Sylvester McCoy and Miriam Margolyes, who find themselves both shocked by inequality and charmed by other aspects of the lifestyle they encounter. “It’s like a war zone,” says one, as they hunt for a public toilet – but the editing is sure to keep the joke on their behalf, while the majority spend the time genuinely exploring the foreign culture rather than complaining. Forget any presumptions: if you liked the film, or you really love Catchphrase this is worth checking in with.
Available until: 29th February (Episode 1)
Photo: BBC/Twofour
The Brain with David Eagleman
How do our brains work? We would explain, but this insightful BBC documentary series makes it clear that everything we understand about the world around us is entirely subjective, filtered by the myriad nerves, synapses and hormones connected to our grey matter. Eagleman presents the barrage of mind-blowing facts with a nifty line in animated diagrams and an enthusiastic demeanour that makes him sound like a magician, liable to draw a rabbit out of a hat any second. Well, we say rabbit. And we say hat. Depending on how your head’s wired, they could be anything.
Available until: 23rd February (Episode 1)
Adam Pearson: Freak Show
After last year’s excellent The Ugly Face of Disability Hate Crime, Adam Pearson returns once again for a film that explores society, prejudice and outsiders. To what extent is it exploitative to use a medical condition to make money or entertain? Pearson tackles the subject with passion, empathy, smarts and a witty sense of humour that makes him one of the most distinctive presenters in modern TV – and not because of his appearance. (For him in serious acting mode, check out Under the Skin.) The result is funny, provocative and unique; exactly the kind of thing that BBC Three is marvellous at. More please. In fact, just more Adam Pearson in general.
Available until: 24th February
Photo: BBC/Betty TV
Brian Pern: 45 Years of Prog and Roll
Simon Day returns for another run of his prog rock mockumentary that plays out like a milder cousin to This Is Spinal Tap. The script doesn’t always land its jokes – Michael Kitchen’s foul-mouthed manager feels like a poor man’s Malcolm Tucker – but the cast inhabit their deadpan skins perfectly, with Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster) proving consistently brilliant as Brian’s new girlfriend and PR manager, Astrid.
Available until: 13th February (Episode 1)
Photo: BBC
Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur
There’s nothing like David Attenborough standing in front of a pack of wild animals talking serenely about their lives and habitat. When it comes to dinosaurs, though, that’s not really possible. The result is an old man standing in front of a CGI titanosaur (the largest animal ever to walk the earth), pretending to see something and looking amazed. Fortunately, that bizarre sight – akin to your clueless uncle trying to work a VCR – only occurs rarely in this fascinating programme, which sees old Dave turn his attentions more to fossils than live species. Instead, the series gives other people the chance to be the expert on-screen explaining things to him – another reversal of the usual Attenborough format, which reveals just how good a presenter Attenborough really is, and just how much he (and his younger self) loves dinosaurs. It’s an infectious sentiment.
Available until: 25th February
Photo: BBC/Graphics by Hello Charlie
Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking
Lobster. Spiralised veg. It’s endearing to see what Mary Berry thinks are the foodstuffs people use to impress friends in 2016, but if the menu for this new cookery show is a little outdated, that’s precisely Mary’s charm: delivering everything with the gentle enthusiasm of everyone’s favourite grandma, she trills through recipes without ever taking herself too seriously or forgetting that ingredients can sometimes be expensive. Compared to any other chef on telly today, she’s a refreshing palette cleanser – and her food, including the lobster, looks gorgeous to boot.
Available until: 26th February
Photo: BBC/Shine TV
James May’s Cars of the People
With Top Gear no more – unless you’re an Amazon Prime Video customer – it would be easy to write off James May as an also-ran of the famed BBC trio, but returning for a second season of his solo series, he proves just how likeable he is. Chatting to us about the cars that turned post-war Germany and Japan into motoring powerhouses, he’s experienced enough to know how to recite facts without them being boring, but more than that, he’s also an adept interviewer, spending several minutes humiliating the designer of the Austin Allegro without it ever feeling cruel. Jeremy Clarkson would never have been able to do that.
Available until: 25th February
Photo: BBC/Will Churchill
The Rack Pack
BBC iPlayer’s first scripted original drama follows the rise of snooker in the 1980s, as a young Steve Davis faces a heated rivalry with Alex “Hurricane” Higgins. Snooker may not be the most exciting or mainstream sport, but the film understands that it’s about people as much as potting – and Will Merrick as Davis and Luke Treadaway as Higgins are uncannily good, one hilariously awkward and the other tragically self-destructive. Together with business guru Barry Hearn (a brilliant Kevin Bishop) crafting a new, professional era for the sport, The Rack Pack is a moving tribute to a bygone sporting age and a legend who simply wouldn’t exist today. The result is something everyone should go snooker loopy over, whether they’re fans of the sport or not. Read our full review.
Photo: BBC / Zeppotron / Keiron McCarron
Stargazing Live: The Spacewalk
How wonderful it is that the BBC has a format so perfectly calibrated for live science broadcasts as Stargazing. Here, the show returns for a week of programming surrounding – you guessed – Tim Peake and the ISS. This climactic episode, featuring his called-off spacewalk on the outside of the space station, is smartly cut with an insightful discussion involving ISS veteran Chris Hadfield and a tense look back at one almost-fatal spacewalk years ago. The result is as gripping as Gravity and, thanks to the presenting of Dara O Briain and Brian Cox, as fun as educational TV gets.
Available until: 14th February
Photo: BBC / Andrew Hayes-Watkins
Shetland
“The location is like an extra character…” people love to say of TV shows and films, but in Shetland’s case, it really is true: as much as DI Jimmy Perez’s investigation into a young man disappearing on a ferry crossing is absorbing enough, the crime drama’s setting of the remote Scottish islands adds a wonderfully grim, beautiful mood that might be the closest the UK gets to the feel of Scandinavian telly.
Available until: 14th February
Photo: BBC/ITV Studios/Mark Mainz
Bad Dads’ Army: The Hatton Garden Heist
Impressively put together just after the court verdict last week, this BBC Three docudrama re-enacts how a gang nearly pulled off Easter 2015’s £14 million record-breaking heist. Is it accurate? Possibly. Is it gripping? Occasionally. Does Danny Dyer narrating, saying phrases like “a classic case of cops and robbers”, make it more entertaining? Absolutely.
Available until: 13th February
David Bowie: Five Years
Following the sad news that David Bowie had passed away, BBC Two decided to re-screen this documentary on 11th January, portraying the career of the iconic pop legend. Inspiring, bold and chameleonic, Bowie’s contribution to music – and influence upon it – is timeless, but this 2013 film (originally broadcast after his surprise release of the album The Next Day) portrays it by focusing on five key years in his life. The interviews with collaborators are insightful, but the unseen archive footage is a treat, ranging from talk show appearances to him in The Elephant Man on Broadway. Can any programme do justice to all of David Bowie’s remarkable talent within 90 minutes? No, but this is as close as it gets.
Read our tribute to David Bowie here.
Available until: 11th February
War and Peace
Andrew Davies begins the almost Herculean task of abridging Tolstoy’s literary classic into six hours of television with an impressively zippy first opening, which introduces us to 19th century Russia, as the country is drawn into war with France – and young idealist (and illegitimate son) Pierre Bezukhov finds himself the unexpected heir to his father’s wealth. Paul Dano is excellent as the hot-headed male, a nervy counterpart to the suave Prince Andrei, who wants to use the war to escape his wife. and a potential partner for the equally earnest Natasha Rostova (Lily James). But if the juggling of subplots works, something doesn’t ring true, as the English-speaking cast and period costumes feel more like Jane Austen than Russia.
Available until: 2nd February 2016 (Episode 1)
Photo: BBC/Mitch Jenkins
Sherlock Holmes: The Abominable Bride
Sherlock is back – but not as we know him. Yes, this Christmas special is the much-anticipated old-school outing, which rewinds the clock to 1895. Martin Freeman’s John Watson is now a veteran of the second Afghan war. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes wears a top hat. Some things, though, never change. “Merry Christmas,” he abruptly wishes to Watson and his wife, then stops smiling. “Thank God that’s over.” Some may have a similar reaction this timey-wimey outing, which sees Steven Moffat retreat so far up his proverbial Mind Palace that any sense of real tension sadly dissipates. But even a flawed episode of Sherlock is still an entertaining one – and this teaser for Season 4 will certainly leave you wanting more. Read full review.
Available until: 31st January
Dickensian
Marley wasn’t dead to begin with. Not yet, anyway. That’s because this isn’t A Christmas Carol: it’s Dickensian, the new series from Tony Jordan. It’s only fitting that the EastEnders veteran should cram as many of the author’s characters as possible into one big serial. There’s an undeniable pleasure in seeing Dickens’ well-known faces from the page collide on screen. Within minutes, we’ve met Fagin (Anton Lesser) and Scrooge (Ned Dennehy), not to mention a young Miss Havisham (Tuppence Middleton) and Little Nell. The main villain, though, is Marley – and Peter Firth gobbles up every second of screen-time he gets like the whole set is made of ham. Demanding money be collected from Little Nell’s family, even as she lays there dying, it’s no surprise that he winds up dead by the end of the first episode, a cliffhanger befitting of Dickens. It’s the perfect excuse for Bleak House’s Inspector Bucket (Stephen Rea) to stroll the streets between each novel and interrogate Charles’ creations. Rea is excellent, easily shouldering the responsibility of holding the thing together. Even if it only ends up as a game of Spot the Novel, what larks could be had here, Pip. What larks. Read full review.
Available until: 5th February (Episodes 6)
Matt Berry Does…
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 six iPlayer short films titled “Matt Berry Does…”. Father’s Day and Summer Holidays are the kind of arbitrary topics that get the absurdist treatment from him and Bob Mortimer – there’s something undeniably hilarious about Matt Berry’s voice playing on top of screaming fish – while Matt Berry Does… Ghosts, is another testament to how effective Berry’s silliness is when distilled down to one brief, concentrated dose. Especially if you like learning about ghosts called Kenneth. The final in the series is now available, Matt Berry Does… New Year.
Available until: June 2016
Photo: BBC iPlayer
Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough
The only three words more exciting than “Great Barrier Reef”? “With David Attenborough”. The national treasure dives beneath the waves for yet another dazzling nature series.
Available until: 2nd February (Episode 1)
Frank Skinner On Demand with…
BBC iPlayer’s latest original series sees Frank Skinner and an array of celebrity guests discuss – yes – iPlayer. Talking through their favourite things they’ve been watching recently, the result is like a 15-minute podcast presenting highlights from the catch-up service. A bit like our weekly column, but less comprehensive and with more famous people. Worth watching just to hear them discuss iPlayer’s original feature film Fear Itself and horror movies in general.
Available until: New episodes arrive every Friday – available for 7 days
Photo: BBC iPlayer
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
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
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
Creation
Paul Bettany plays Charles Darwin in this drama that follows the completion and publication of his theory of evolution – one that contravened his wife’s religious beliefs. Bettany is great, while his chemistry with an excellent Jennifer Connelly turns Darwin’s public controversy into a source of private conflict. An absorbing watch.
Available until: 19th February
Once
Two singer-songwriters find themselves falling in love in Dublin in this charming, heart-breaking musical that is worth seeing just for its soundtrack.
Available until: 6th February
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Ben Whishaw is wonderful in this unsettling thriller, based on the novel by Patrick Suskind. He plays Grenouille, a perfumer born with a super sense of smell, who travels 18th century France in the search for the ultimate scent. It was dismissed by sniffy (ahem) critics at the time as “big nose cinema”, thanks to its constant close-ups of Whishaw’s nostrils, but Tom Tykwer’s adaptation manages that rare thing of capturing smell on screen. Inhale slowly to savour the effect.
Available until: 6th February