- Lifestyle & Sports
- 18 Jun 20
From French orchestral manoeuvres in the dark to the latest Harlan Coben adaptation, Team Hot Press has you covered...
Philharmonia (Walter Presents)
There’s no shortage of French horn in this sudsy Gallic drama, which finds Hélène Barizet taking over as the first female conductor of an orchestra rife with misogyny, drugs and as many sexual peccadillos as musical arpeggios.
It’s made a star back home of Marie-Sophie Ferdane whose character also has to contend with a cheating husband and a mother whose mental health is rapidly declining.
Add in Paris as the glamorous backdrop, and this is bingeing material of the very highest order.
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Brave New World (Sky One)
With Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio’s attempts to bring it to the big screen coming to nowt, Aldous Huxley’s iconic 1932 novel finally makes its TV bow with David Wiener of Homecoming and The Killing renown taking care of the showrunning.
Set in New London and featuring a career reviving turn from Demi Moore, the genetically engineered near future storyline will go down a storm with all those eugenics fans who’ve been hanging round Number 10 and the White House.
Perry Mason (Sky Atlantic)
Fifty-four years after the TV series that first brought him to global attention ended, the titular criminal-defence lawyer is back in a gritty origins series set in 1930s Depression-era Los Angeles.
Staying as true as possible to Erle Stanley Gardner’s original series of detective stories, the relentless Perry is played with aplomb by Matthew Rhys who previously impressed in The Americans.
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The Woods (Netflix)
Harlan Coben’s red-hot streak continues with this Polish adaptation of his time-hopping police procedural, which leaves its numerous plot twists un-telegraphed.
Evidence found on the body of a homicide victim sparks hope in a prosecutor that his sister who disappeared 25 years earlier could still be alive.
Agnieszka Grochowska, who appeared alongside Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman in Child 44, heads up the cast.
We Hunt Together (Alibi) PICTURED ABOVE
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Taking its visual and plot cues from the Scandi brigade, this noir six-parter focuses on Baba, a former child soldier whose attempts to suppress his predisposition for extreme violence go out the window when he meets the beautiful but very possibly psychopathic Freddy.
The two detectives who are trying to bring their killing spree to an end have severe character flaws of their own, making for a story that’s as morally ambiguous as it is murderous.
New Nurses (Walter Presents strand of Channel4.com)
Walter also comes up trumps with this post-World War II drama about a Danish teaching hospital, which controversially decides to admit its first male students.
A bullying head nurse makes Erik yearn for his old life in the army, but along then comes the upper class Anna who needs no lessons in bedside manner.
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I'll Be Gone In The Dark (Netflix)
True crime author Michelle McNamara spent over a decade researching and writing I’ll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search For The Golden Gate Killer, which posthumously hit the bestsellers list in February 2018 two years after her death.
It pointed a finger at Joseph James Angelo who was arrested mere weeks after the book’s publication and is awaiting trial on twelve counts of first-degree murder. Similar in tone to Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, its title references the, “You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark” line used by the Golden Gate Killer to one of his victims who survived.
ANNE+ (Walter Presents strand of Channel4.com)
Good news for Joe Duffy listeners looking for something new to be offended by now that Normal People has reached its, er, climax. ANNE+ is a whip-smart Dutch series focusing on a young lesbian's turbulent love life at uni.
With Orange Is The New Black's Laura Gomez such a big fan that she cleared her schedule to guest in it, it's quite the international sensation.
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Roswell, New Mexico (ITV2)
Having proved a ratings winner in the States, this fine piece of sci-fi hokum has finally found a home on this side of the Atlantic. Jeanine Mason, who had a recurring role in Grey's Anatomy, plays the daughter of undocumented immigrants who discovers that her boyfriend is in fact an alien.
With various shadowy government organisations sniffing around, it really is a love that dare not speak its name.
The Other One (BBC One)
Two girls called Catherine Walcott have no idea that they're sisters until their philandering, double life-leading dad drops dead.
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With a female-dominated cast who've previously starred in the likes of Downtown Abbey, The Windsors, Happy Valley and The Thick Of It, it hits all the right comedic notes whilst tugging royally at the heartstrings too.