Great British boxing rivalries, David Mitchell solving mysteries and Phillip Schofield cast away: The 20 best things on Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime and more this week, chosen by our TV experts
Now that it’s getting colder, there’s no better time to settle down in front of the television for the night.
And our experts have picked plenty of shows to keep you entertained on those dark autumnal evenings. There’s a murder mystery from comedy legend David Mitchell as well as an attempt by Phillip Schofield to find a route out of television exile.
The Hollywood heavyweights are taking to the small screen too – with a crime caper featuring Brad Pitt and George Clooney and a sharp ten-part romcom starring Kristen Bell on offer.
Put these shows on your watchlist now…
Industry
Addictive drama about ruthless bankers and their raunchy after-hours antics
Year: 2020-
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
This exhilarating drama is set in the toxic world of high finance in the City of London. There, at fictional bank Pierpoint & Co, a group of recent graduates, both British and American, are keen to make a name for themselves – and if that means indulging in a huge amount of drug-taking and sex, then so be it!
Brits Harry Lawtey (You & Me) and Marisa Abela (Back To Black) lead the cast of bright young things who are sucked in by the promise of big money – but soon find that the ‘greed is good’ culture has its inevitable dark side.
Series two begins after the pandemic when Pierpoint’s employees return to the trading floor to find that the London and New York teams have been pitted against each other in a fight for survival. The unlikeable cohort of young bankers are even more hedonistic to offset the cut-throat office antics, but we also understand them better after learning more of their respective backstories.
For the most recent third series, Game Of Thrones’ Kit Harington joins the cast as the CEO of a green tech company, Harper eyes a new start and Yasmin starts to come into her own. (Three series)
Phillip Schofield Cast Away
The former This Morning presenter films himself on an uninhabited island for 10 days
Year: 2024
Watch now on My5
Ahead of the return of this celebrity survival challenge, Channel 5 kept the identity of the castaway to be marooned on a tropical island a closely guarded secret. And no wonder, because it could hardly have been a more controversial choice. Phillip Schofield has been away from our screens since May of 2023, when details emerged of his affair with a junior member of the production staff on This Morning.
Over summer, it seemed he was still keeping a low profile in the wake of the scandal as he came to terms with the implosion of a hugely successful, 40-plus-year presenting career, when in fact, he’d been whisked off to spend 10 days on an uninhabited island off the coast of Madagascar. Confronting both the challenges of isolation and the forces of nature would have been no picnic, but Phillip said he jumped at the opportunity to take part in this year’s series. While he admits to his workplace fling being unwise, he points out he did nothing illegal, and is keen to be able to put across his side of the story – and spending ten days on an island, alone but for a selection of cameras, is the perfect way for him to do that. But should this be his route out of television exile? Have a look and see what he has to say. (Three episodes)
Four Kings (2024 series)
Four-parter about the rivalry between Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Frank Bruno and Lennox Lewis
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Prime Video
In boxing, ‘four kings’ usually refers to the American fighters Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán and Marvin Hagler. This four-parter applies the term to four great British pugilists, namely the middleweights Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn and the heavyweights Frank Bruno and Lennox Lewis, zeroing in on the rivalry between the two pairs in the 1990s, specifically across one week in 1991.
‘I was not just odd, I was on a different planet,’ recalls Eubank of how he came across at the time, but then this was the 1990s, a decade full of colour and particularly in boxing – Frank Bruno was even doing panto around that time. There’s plenty of such colourful, showbiz-style details in the series, but it also does a great job of conveying the tough side of boxing, blending archive footage with exclusive interviews to fully illustrate the cost of pursuing the sport for these four fighters – or as Eubank puts it, warriors. (Four episodes)
Joan
Sophie Turner plays one of Britain’s most notorious jewel thieves in this stylish true crime drama
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on ITVX
Sophie Turner – aka Game Of Thrones’s Sansa Stark – is electrifying in this glossy, 1980s-set drama based on the real-life story of ballsy Joan Hannington, a woman driven by necessity to become ‘The Godmother’ of London’s criminal underworld.
We meet Joan when she is forced to leave her violent gangster husband, putting her sweet young daughter, Kelly, in foster care. To get Kelly back, Joan starts stealing jewellery – by swallowing it – and soon she’s seduced by the thrill of thieving. Turner plays Joan as both spunky and vulnerable, so we’re really rooting for her from the start. (Six episodes)
Ludwig
David Mitchell stars as a puzzle setter whose quizzical brain solves crimes
Year: 2024
Certificate: 12
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
John Taylor, ‘the Elvis Presley of puzzle setters’, aka Ludwig, is a hermit with a 20-year-old mobile phone and the look of a 1970s geography teacher. And he’s about to have an out-of-character adventure, impersonating his twin brother James, a police detective who has mysteriously disappeared.
James’s wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) persuades John (David Mitchell) to help her work out what’s going on with James, with the only clue being a rather cryptic handwritten letter. After proving highly effective at crime-solving while impersonating his sibling, John sticks around to get to the bottom of the mystery one case at a time.
It could have been gimmicky – yet another amateur sleuth with major quirks – but the overarching story holds it all together, and it’s also fun watching John getting used to being in the world and around people, especially Lucy and the police team he works with.
The tone is light and jaunty, with a supporting cast you’ll recognise from comedy: Mum’s Dorothy Atkinson, The Office’s Ralph Ineson, Idiot Abroad Karl Pilkington and Sophie Willan (Alma’s Not Normal). There’s also a superb guest cast to watch out for, including Felicity Kendal, Derek Jacobi and Rose Ayling-Ellis. (Six episodes)
Wolfs
Brad Pitt and George Clooney play rival fixers in this action comedy
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Apple TV+
This crime caper about bickering rivals banks on the megawatt charm of its stars, Brad Pitt and George Clooney, and doesn’t feel the need to do much beyond that – and, depending on your mileage for such things, it could well be right.
Pitt and Clooney’s easy on-screen chemistry was last seen in 2008’s Burn After Reading and before that in Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, and Wolfs has some of the old Hollywood charm of the latter, built as it is around the banter between its leads, who are playing two professionals on a night in New York gone wrong.
All you need to know about the plot is that Clooney and Pitt play fixers – people who specialise in cleaning up messes – and they both prefer to do their fixing alone. But here they’re double-booked and forced to work as a team. That’s the bit of plot that brings them together, then everything from that point on is fun, bromantic banter as Pitt and Clooney pretend to hate each other. It’s said that there’s going to be a Wolfs 2, so it’ll be interesting to see where they take the characters from here if it happens. (107 minutes)
Nobody Wants This
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody play a raucous podcast host and a rabbi in a sweet and sharp ten-part romcom
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
Romcoms are all about singletons overcoming obstacles to fall and stay in love, but the couple at the core of this ten-parter have more to overcome than most. It’s there in the title – nobody wants this – and to an extent that ‘nobody’ even includes the couple themselves.
Kristen Bell stars as Joanne, an emotionally unavailable, irreligious and very funny woman who hosts a podcast about sexual adventures with her even more outrageous sister Morgan (Justine Lupe, Willa from Succession). So, who is the least likely person you can imagine Joanne dating? How about a career-focused and emotionally well-adjusted rabbi? Step forward Noah (The OC’s Adam Brody), who meets Joanne at a party when he’s just out of a serious relationship, and the rocky road to love begins from there.
Nobody Wants This is a frequently very funny show, with Bell in particular deploying her expert comic timing to great effect, and Brody is a sweet straight man. If you’re after sweetness in general this has some of that, too, along with bitter moments of tension that it doesn’t overstretch. It also has a particularly sharp eye for the details of friendships between women and, perhaps most impressively, manages to make some jokes about Jewish mothers-in-law that feel fresh. A second series feels possible given how it ends, but not necessary. (Ten episodes)
Will & Harper
Will Ferrell embarks on a heartwarming road trip with an old friend who is transitioning to live as a woman
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
When Will Ferrell was hired as a performer on Saturday Night Live in 1995, he started the same week as a writer who became one of his closest friends, not to mention head writer on SNL. More recently, Will received a letter from Harper Steele saying, ‘Hey Will, something I need you to know, I’ll be transitioning to live as a woman.’
This is a huge change and Harper, who used to love driving around the US, staying in small towns and enjoying the bars and the lively characters you find within, is adjusting to what it means. ‘I love this country so much, I just don’t know if it loves me back right now.’ So Harper and Will hit the road together to find out, and this pleasingly freewheeling documentary is the result.
Along the way we meet Harper’s children, many Americans and a steady stream of famous faces from SNL including Tina Fey, Will Forte and Kristen Wiig (don’t miss Wiig’s song over the end credits). Their journey certainly has its ups and downs when it comes to answering Harper’s question about the nature of the country but it is, ultimately, a heartwarming and very human experience that leaves you better than it finds you. At times, it’s also oddly reminiscent of Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing – two great comedy minds enjoying each other’s company, digging into the issues that matter to them. ‘Do you think you’re a worse driver as a female driver?’ asks Will at one point. What also becomes clear over the course of the film is just how far Ferrell will go to get a laugh, or to lift his friend’s spirits. It’s an endearing quality. (104 minutes)
One Life
Anthony Hopkins stars as Nicholas Winton, the British Schindler
Year: 2023
Certificate: 12
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
Before the Second World War broke out, Nicholas Winton helped to save hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis, bringing them to safety in Britain. In 1988 he was invited on the programme That’s Life!, only to learn that many of the adults in the audience were only there because he saved their lives. It was a remarkable moment and this moving drama about the life of the ‘British Schindler’ puts it to good use. The film also has a magnificent star in Anthony Hopkins, as Winton, who died in 2015, aged 106.
Based on the book by Winton’s daughter Barbara, this solid piece of filmmaking flashes back to show us those achievements with Johnny Flynn taking on the role of the younger Winton along with Helena Bonham Carter as Nicholas’s mother Babette, who helped to save the children. Winton’s story is one of those wartime tales that should be known by everyone. (110 minutes)
Inside Out 2
This Pixar sequel tackles Riley’s awkward transition to teenager
Year: 2024
Certificate: u
Watch now on Disney+
The transition to teenager is one of the most intense stages of life, and it’s the logical subject for Pixar’s sequel to its all-round 2015 hit about the inner existence of an American girl. Riley, whose life was once governed by the relatively simple emotions of joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust, is now invaded by four new emotions – Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment – who threaten to take over her head entirely as the enters high school.
The two camps vie for control of the 13-year-old’s head and heart as she navigates challenges such as choosing new friends. The results, while not quite up to the incredibly high standard of the original film, are a delight that is unlikely to disappoint anyone. And that’s about as much as you can ask for, really. There are a lot of good jokes (don’t miss the ‘sar chasm’) and plenty of relatable moments that should hit home for both teenagers and adults across the efficient running time of just over an hour and a half.
Keen fans of the original may notice some different voices on the cast – Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling were replaced as Fear and Disgust by Tony Hale and Liza Lapira, reportedly over insufficient fees – although that shouldn’t make much difference to the casual viewer. (96 minutes)
Apocalypse Slough: A Murder, They Hope Mystery
Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson investigate a murder at a rugby club
Year: 2024
Certificate: pg
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson embark on another comical feature-length mystery filled with familiar faces. Barry from EastEnders (Shaun Williamson) is one of the first victims and, as Terry and Gemma (Vegas and Gibson) set about investigating the case, it’s clear that Gemma is on something of an ego trip, lording it over Terry in a way that is sure to come back to bite her before the case is closed.
The source of this sense of self-importance is some training from the Serious Crimes Agency, and adding another dimension to the case is Gemma’s sister Monica (Miranda’s Sarah Hadland), who is livestreaming the whole thing to her followers on social media.
The case unfolds at a rugby club, and among the familiar faces are Matthew Kelly, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Gemma Jones and, presumably, whoever is behind the sinister mask being worn by the killer. Highlights include Kelly’s committed performance, the eye-popping scene on an inflatable assault course and any scene featuring Sarah Hadland. She’s utterly hilarious as Monica. (87 minutes)
The Penguin
Colin Farrell is unrecognisable in this Scarface-style Batman spin-off
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
Ever since the Christopher Nolan movies, the Batman franchise has been a particularly dark and violent one on screen, reminiscent of gritty detective stories. This HBO spin-off series, set one week after the events of 2022 movie The Batman, pushes it more into gangster territory, with a main character and story reminiscent of Scarface or The Sopranos. Colin Farrell is virtually unrecognisable as Oz Cobb, a literally scar-faced, middle-ranking gangster who is nicknamed ‘Penguin’ for his wobbly gait and constantly underestimated by all those around him.
The other big character here is Sofia Falcone (Palm Springs’ Cristin Milioti), the daughter of a gangster boss just returned from a long and harrowing stint in Arkham Asylum. The relative fortunes of Oz and Sofia are central to a gripping, twisting unfolding story of gang war that seems unlikely to involve Batman himself anytime soon. Still, these two are such layered and magnetic characters that it’s hard to mind. (Eight episodes)
Midnight Family
Mexican drama series about the family crew running a private ambulance
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Apple TV+
The official medical services can’t even scratch the surface of the medical emergencies that plague the sprawling streets and ghettos of Mexico City. Picking up the slack are the crews of private independent ambulances, providing ad hoc paramedic services for the city’s millions.
Inspired by the 2019 documentary of the same name, this ten-episode Spanish-language drama series follows the Tamayo family as night by night they try to save lives and scratch a living in the face of the most extreme circumstances.
At the core of the story is medical student Marigaby Tamayo (Renata Vaca), who tries to juggle her daytime studies with the hands-on life-saving action she sees every night working as a paramedic alongside her father Ramón and her siblings Marcus and Julito. It’s vivid, exciting stuff, full of life-and-death medical action and Grey’s Anatomy-esque personal dramas. (Ten episodes)
Killer Heat
Noirish mystery based on Jo Nesbo’s short story, starring Richard Madden
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Prime Video
Jo Nesbo’s books are popular targets for screen adaptations, with past examples including the 2017 movie The Snowman with Michael Fassbender as Nesbo’s most famous character, the detective Harry Hole, and 2011’s Headhunters starring Game Of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
Killer Heat is based on one of the Norwegian author’s short stories – The Jealousy Man – and stars Bodyguard’s Richard Madden as twin brothers caught up in a love triangle that turns violent on a remote Greek island, and involves the death of a shipping magnate.
Rounding out the small but perfectly formed lead cast are Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies) as a point on that love triangle, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as The Jealousy Man of the original story’s title, a troubled private eye who looks into the consequences of this romantic situation gone awry.
The snappily-dressed cast look great and are terrific to watch in this mystery, which was filmed on the Greek island of Crete – so the scenery is no slouch, either. (96 minutes)
Have I Got News For You US
The American version of the British news satire show
Year: 2024
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
They’ve tried several times to make a US version of Have I Got News For You, but it’s never made it beyond the pilot stage before. In 2024 the show finally found a home at news network CNN under Mark Thompson, who was familiar with the show from his years at the BBC. This familiarity was important, as the show’s creator, Jimmy Mulville, described how hard it has been to explain the concept of the show to US TV executives, observing that when you say ‘it’s a quiz where the points don’t matter and no one wins any money, they kind of glaze over’.
This ten-episode attempt has been a success. That’s partly down to the talent – host Roy Wood Jr is an assured, authoritative and sharply funny presence – and partly due to it being scheduled during one of the most eventful US Presidential election campaigns in history, so there’s no shortage of material. It’s still recognisably HIGNFY, even though each episode is now over 40 minutes long and its rhythms are clearly geared towards ad breaks. And, even if it doesn’t make it to a second series, it should finally lay to rest the endlessly repeated untruth that Americans don’t understand irony or satire. (Ten episodes)
Jailbreak: Love On The Run
Documentary looking at what happened when a warder fell in love with an inmate
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
In April 2022, US prison officer Vicky White drove an inmate named Casey White (no relation) out of Lauderdale County Jail in Florence, Alabama. She told her colleagues that she was taking him to the courthouse for a mental health evaluation. They never arrived. Instead the pair – who had been conducting an illicit affair – went on the run, eluding the authorities for more than a week before the manhunt ended in tragedy.
This documentary digs into a fascinating and unlikely case using interviews from White’s friends and colleagues as well as sundry other law enforcement figures to try to explain just why a respected prison official on the verge of retirement would do such a thing, as well as looking at just how Casey White wheedled his way into her affections. It’s a strange, engrossing and rather sad story. (88 minutes)
Gangs Of London
Sky’s slick and violent gangster drama set in Britain’s capital
Year: 2020-
Certificate: 18
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
Watch now on Netflix
Sky’s drama about warring gangs is the kind of show in which people stare moodily into the distance and say, ‘This is my city.’ It flips between meetings in shiny boardrooms and gang brawls in gritty locations, and has strong acting talent to drive it, particularly Game Of Thrones’s Michelle Fairley as a fearsome widow with a big axe to grind, and The Capture’s Paapa Essiedu as the smart and ambitious Alex Dumani.
Clearly expensive and very violent, series one opens with the death of a kingpin whose son (a simmering Joe Cole) tries to step into his shoes. The second series starts with Alex on top of the world, but will his slick suits protect him in the coming war? The shadowy investors have installed a new regime in London’s underworld under the control of the brutal Koba (Waleed Zuaiter), who now has a monopoly on the drug trade. But the gangs are circling, and the battle for a slice of the pie is imminent. There will be blood, as they say – and lots of it, so be warned. A third series is on the way. (Two series)
Absentia
Castle’s Stana Katic stars as an FBI agent with missing memories
Year: 2018
Certificate: 18
Watch now on Prime Video
Six years after she went missing while hunting a serial killer, FBI agent Emily Byrne (Castle’s Stana Katic) is found alive in a cabin in the woods. She has no memory of what has happened to her and, because she’d been declared dead in absentia, her husband has remarried and his new wife has raised her son. As if that weren’t bad enough, Emily is soon under suspicion for murder.
What really happened during the six years she has been away? Could she have gone to the dark side? This twisty thriller ran for three series and, occasionally, required viewers not to so much suspend their disbelief as to beat it into submission. But Katic is always a compelling lead and finding out what happened to her character is enough to pull you through. (Three series)
Apples Never Fall
Big Little Lies author’s sun-drenched and tangled family mystery
Year: 2024
Certificate: 12
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
From Liane Moriarty, the author behind Big Little Lies, comes another mystery series that is plugged into the tangled lives of an ensemble cast, this time the fractious family of retired tennis pros Joy and Stan Delaney (Annette Bening and Sam Neill) and their four grown-up children.
It opens with Joy’s disappearance and a rising temperature of panic, yet the main thrust of the show, as with Big Little Lies, is to unpick the relationships of the characters and the truths they are suppressing. We switch between the present timeline as the siblings try to unravel what happened to their mother, and the months leading up to her disappearance and the sudden arrival of stranger Savannah, whose presence serves to highlight the family’s intermingled, co-dependent bitterness and resentment.
The cast are all easy to watch, presided over by veterans Bening and Neill, with The White Lotus’s Jake Lacy as the wealthy older son Troy, Mad Men’s Alison Brie as hippy life coach Amy and Wentworth’s Georgia Flood as the mysterious Savannah. Two relative newcomers star as the other siblings, Conor Merrigan Turner as ‘boats and yoga’ Logan and Essie Randles as physical therapist Brooke. (Seven episodes)
All And Eva
Sharp and hilarious Swedish comedy about modern motherhood
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Viaplay
Sharply performed comedy from Sweden about the ups and downs of modern (single) motherhood, with Tuva Novotny as Eva. Our heroine is having a baby and doesn’t want anyone to make a drama about it, especially as she’s having it via sperm donor.
That leaves her mother slack-jawed, especially when she learns her daughter is leaving Sweden and heading to Copenhagen to do it, meaning the donor will most likely be… Danish. It’s when Eva reaches the Danish capital that the story takes another twist as, after she chooses her donor, she worries he’s not up to scratch and decides to track him down in person.
Novotny is very funny as Eva, a character with poor personal boundaries who follows her own whims and then becomes hugely anxious about them, both of which are great engines for comedy.
The one thing Eva seems to be sure of at the start of this series is that love doesn’t work, hence her decision to go it alone. Will that change once she meets the man who is supposed to be unknowingly fathering her child? (Six episodes)
