James R | On 02, Aug 2015

Summer is all about going outside, having ice cream and sitting on the beach… isn’t it? Not if you make the mistake of browsing through BBC iPlayer’s current catalogue.

Ripper Street has returned – resurrected by Amazon, where the full Season 3 is already available to watch, uncut – and is better than ever. David Walliams has put on a lovely period suit for some Agatha Christie shenanigans. Virginia Woolf is caught up in a hot-bed of sex and artistic freedom. And a group of young disabled people are trying to find a new carer. Diversity doesn’t quite cover it – especially when you factor in the sporting action and Proms music both available on-demand, not to mention the treasure trove of iPlayer exclusive content, including the superb Comedy Feed pilots and Original Drama Shorts.

In its current form, BBC iPlayer isn’t a catch-up TV service. It’s a black hole designed to suck away the summer and leave you glued to your screen for the whole of August. Pass the ice cream, would you?

We review the best TV shows and films now available to stream from the Beeb:

TV

Ripper Street: Season 3

“It is a battle that has no end, but is worth the blood.” That was Detective Inspector Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) to his sidekick, Drake (Jerome Flynn), in Season 1 of Ripper Street. Set in 1880s Whitechapel, the show saw the newly appointed Reid attempting to lead the police force out of the shadow of Jack the Ripper.

We begin four years after the events of Ripper Street Season 2 – a break that gives ample room for backstory to reward former viewers, but also means newcomers can pick it up straight off.

All of our characters have gone their own ways. Drake has moved to Manchester. Reid has retreated into his own den of case histories, a loner assembling a library of felonies and felons. And Captain Jackson is a playboy once more. But as a train crash brings them all back together, the stand-out improvement here is the women: often restricted by Richard Warlow’s scripts, now Rose is set for a complex rags-to-riches-to-rags arc, while Long Susan (the excellent MyAnna Buring) is leading a social movement that is spreading across London – but needs funds to keep growing.

“The abyss isn’t within us or without us,” Reid tells Drake in one of his more sombre moments, when discussing the state of London and humanity. “We are the abyss.”

It’s the polar opposite of his mantra in Season 1 – and as Reid stalks the streets of Whitechapel, his long coat fading into the darkness of the back streets, that transformation is as stunning as it is thrilling. Ripper Street is back. And it’s better than ever. Read our full review.

Available until: 30th August

Photo: BBC/Tiger Aspect/Bernard Walsh

Partners in Crime

David Walliams dials down his usual schtick to play Tommy Beresford, who gets caught up into a web of espionage with his wife, Tuppence, after a chance encounter with a mysterious woman on the train. Based on Agatha Christie’s novel, The Secret Adversary – the debut of her innocent double-act detective – Walliams and Jessica Raine are convincing enough as a borderline stale married couple that it’s impossible not to be swept up in their Sunday night shenanigans. Driven by Tuppence’s curiosity, the plot’s a tad outlandish but the period setting (with all its hats, suits and vehicles) adds to the charming escapism of the romp.

Available until: 25th August

Photo: BBC Pictures/Endor Productions

Wanted: A Very Personal Assistant

BBC Three continues to break down barriers between myths and disabled people with this excellent series following the attempts of some of the 300,000 young disabled people in the UK who need carers for their daily needs to hire the right helper. Could the country’s population of young, unemployed people be the solution? The clash between brain-damaged Josh, whose rude humour has led him to a fledgling stand-up career, and his more wholesome trial candidate sparks both laughs and sincere sympathy, while Jasmine (a 21-year old with spinal muscular atrophy) finds it tough to tackle the balance between a boozy best friend and a sensible personal carer; the fact that she has a partner and her new potential helper doesn’t only emphasises the complex intricacies of the patient-carer bond.

From toilet malfunctions to nights out on the town, the result humanises a relationship that can often seem distant or professional – and that honesty, aside from making for compelling and moving TV, could well inspire younger viewers to consider a new career. More like this please, BBC Three.

Available until: 26th August

Photo: BBC/Ricochet

Life in Squares

Who exactly were the Bloomsbury Set? Imagine a bunch of Tinder users in the early 20th entry, comprising of EM Forster, Virginia Woolf and more. Virginia (Lydia Leonard) and her older sister, Vanessa (Phoebe Fox), are the centre focus of this drama following their sexual and artistic exploits. While Vanessa finds herself tangled with Clive Bell – whose flirtatious repertoire includes such gems as “only two more days and it’ll be the opening of trout fishing season…” – Ed Birch’s Lytton Strachey and James Norton’s Duncan Grant bring homosexual tension to the screen. The result is a steamy and speedy drama that blows people as much as it does the cobwebs away from period drama tropes. Trout fishing has never seemed so appealing.

Available until: 26th August

Photo: BBC/Ecosse Films/Robert Viglasky

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

The Ugly Face of Disability Hate Crime

You may not have heard of Adam Pearson, but you’ll recognise him. He has one of those faces. That’s partly because he starred in Under the Skin as one of Scarlett Johansson’s victims. And partly because he suffers from neurofibromatosis type 1. If you haven’t heard of that either, you’ll certainly recognise the conditions effects: his facial disfigurement turns even the most well-assuming stranger into a demonstration of prejudice. Some people avoid him on buses, but others joke about setting him on fire. Every year, there are estimated to be over 50 thousand hate crimes against disabled people in the UK. But why are only around 1,000 reported? Taking to the streets for revealing vox pops and trying to track down someone at Google to clamp down on online bullying, his campaign to raise awareness of “disabilism” (prejudice against people with any form of disability) is funny, provocative and hugely uplifting. Like its important subject matter, this is a piece of television that shouldn’t go under-reported.

Available until: 22nd August

Photo: BBC/Betty TV/Mark Johnson

London Anniversary Games

It’s been three years since the London 2012 Olympics, but the Anniversary Games held every summer still conjure up warm feelings of nostalgia and national pride. With Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Usain Bolt all on the cards for the 2015 competition, though, there’s also sporting entertainment galore.

Available until: 23rd August

Photo: BBC/Andrew Hayes-Watkins

The Sky at Night: Pluto Revealed

NASA’s New Horizons mission is yet another reminder of mankind’s scientific achievements: the first time any probe has visited the dwarf planet. How did we get those images in such stunning close-up detail? Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Chris Lintott present the inside story of the groundbreaking trip across the solar system in the 750th episode of the Beeb’s long-running astronomy programme.

Available until: 19th August

Photo: BBC/Victoria Weaver

Storyville: Circus Elephant Rampage

In 1973, a baby elephant was captured from the wild and trained to perform in the circus. He was named Tyke. “20 years later…” begins Storyville’s Circus Elephant Rampage ominously, as we are told of how the animal went on a rampage in Honolulu in 1994. Interviews and footage of trainers explaining their process build up to the event in a detail that recalls the recent Blackfish – and the final footage, shot first-hand by onlookers – is as shocking as that documentary.

Available until: 21st August

Photo: BBC/Jumping Dog Productions Pty Ltd/The Altoona Mirror

People Just Do Nothing

Several years after it was first a BBC Comedy Feed pilot, People Just Do Nothing returns for a second season following the vaguely inept owners of pirate station Kurupt FM. (They’re very big in the Brentford area.)

Co-created by and starring Allan Mustafa as MC Grindah and co-starring Hugo Chegwin as DJ Beats, what started as a YouTube series has been nurtured by the Beeb into a comedy staple – becoming the first BBC Three show to premiere on iPlayer along the way. There’s a hint of Alan Partridge to the mockumentary – “How far does Kurupt reach?” asks our filmmakers on a balcony overlooking a council estate. “As far as the eye can see,” comes the proud reply. “But not that bit on the left.” – but the setting, characters and knowingly bad music has its own rhythm, which the cast stick to with engaging chemistry. Scenes where we catch Beats out of his hat and in a business suit for a job interview bring a surprising sympathy to his useless existence – and even more sympathy for his girlfriend, Roche, who has to endure the worst birthday party for their daughter ever recorded on screen. Asim Chaudhry as their friend, who runs a string of incompetent and illegal businesses, is always a treat. (Watch out for his “Polish Vodka”, which isn’t from Poland, but is made with window cleaner.)

Available until: 2nd August (Season 1)

Photo: BBC / Roughcut / Jack Barnes

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

A Song for Jenny

Broadcast by the BBC to mark the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings, A Song for Jenny is a heart-rending example of the cathartic power of TV. The film, adapted by Frank McGuinness from Julie Nicholson’s book, follows Julie as she tries to find out what happened to her daughter, Jenny, who was travelling in London that morning. It’s a horrifically honest performance from Emily Watson that brings to life exactly what Julie was going through, while the script keeps things sincere and straightfoward. The result is a rare insight into the raw anguish of loss. A decade after the terrorist attack, it brings a country together in a cry of bereavement, a prayer for grief and a hymn to a mother’s courage.

Available until: 4th August

David Attenborough Meets President Obama

“Americans really go in for birthdays,” says David Attenborough, in his delightfully humble way, after being flown to the White House for a meeting with President Barack Obama. Ostensibly an interview by Barack with the wildlife broadcasting legend, the 35-minute programme is a more casual chat, covering everything from David’s record-breaking dive on the Great Barrier Reef to the challenges facing the environment today. The greying Obama, who is on something of a roll at the moment, is as professorial as ever with his thoughtful questions, indicating that he is well aware of the need to raise awareness of global warming. The fact that this drew 2.5 million viewers when broadcast on BBC One is proof that he’s succeeded at that. Watching Sir David get a surprise birthday cake is a bonus.

(If this gets you in the mood for more Attenborough, BBC iPlayer is your friend: the service usually has at least one wildlife programme presented by the national treasure. At the moment, it’s Natural World.)

Available until: 11th August

BBC Proms 2015

The Proms are a fantastic additional to the cultural calendar every year, with the Beeb’s increasingly diverse range of programming – this year, instead of the semi-traditional Doctor Who Prom, there is a David Attenborough-themed event and one based around Sherlock – helping to make classical music as accessible as it is affordable. For those unable to make it to the Royal Albert Hall, the televised coverage is second to none, with a large proportion of Proms broadcast live and subsequently available to stream. Composers from Beethoven and Handel to Britten and Holst, plus performers such as Yo-Yo Ma, whenever you want to watch or listen to them? Play on, BBC. Play on.

Photo: BBC / Chris Christodoulou

Available until: 17th August (First Night of the Proms)

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.

Available until: 10th August (Episode 1)

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

The Quatermass Experiment

An astronaut mutates into a murderous monster after returning to Earth from an experimental space flight in this classic sci-fi, making Professor Quatermass mankind’s last hope of survival.

Available until: 8th August

Tropic Thunder

This fantastically observed satire of Hollywood blockbusting follows a group of actors trying to make the ultimate war movie. Ben Stiller and Jack Black are wonderful as a clueless action man and drug addict, but it’s Robert Downey Jr.’s obsessively method performer who brings the biggest laughs. “I’m a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!” he yells with a straight face. The over-the-top finale loses some of the hilarity, but only because it so closely resembles the product its parodying: sometimes, the best satire is scarily believable.

Available until: 8th August

Tintin and the Golden Fleece

Think you know Tintin? Think again. This 1961 adaptation of the classic cartoon character is a live-action romp, which is a sight worth seeing to be believed.

Available until: 8th August

The Road

“Soon all the trees in the world will have fallen… I think it’s October, but I can’t be sure. I haven’t kept a calendar for years.”

The post-apocalyptic world is a grey place. Drowned in decaying ash, it sits in ruins, foraged by the few who survived. Among them are a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Shot in a morbid monochrome, the film’s depressing palette only lifts in the flashbacks, showing us the life that was destroyed by the fire. Glowing off-screen in threatening flickers, we never see the destruction first-hand – John Hillcoat’s framing is perfect throughout, unflinching yet resolutely enigmatic. Despite its weighty content, the result is a precise and poignant piece of film-making. One that demands to be seen, even if you won’t enjoy it.

Available until: 8th August

The BFG

This classic children’s animation tells the story of Sophie, an orphan who goes on a magical journey with a big friendly giant, creating wonderful dreams along the way. Magical stuff.

Available until: 23rd August

iLL Manors

Plan B’s gritty drama follows a drug dealer who is dragged into a multi-stranded tableau of London misery. Mobile phones, guns and babies all collide in something that feels like EastEnders, but – thanks to its effective use of music – has a sound all of its own.

Available until: 1st September

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. (Read our full review)

Available until: 2016

Add to Watchlist