Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1Exile (2011)Exile (2011) 7.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired 1 May 2011A journalist returns home to care for a father whose dementia has made an old professional disgrace harder to understand. John Simm and Jim Broadbent make the investigation inseparable from the work and resentment of care. Three episodes offer a concentrated family mystery, with Alzheimer's disease…0
  2. 2Chimerica (2019)Chimerica (2019) 6.6/10 on IMDbFirst aired 17 Apr 2019A photographer becomes convinced he can identify the man in the famous Tiananmen Square image, while his own decisions about images come under scrutiny. Lucy Kirkwood's four-part adaptation uses a fictional journalist to question who controls a public story. It is a demanding discovery about…0
  3. 3South Riding (2011)South Riding (2011) 7.2/10 on IMDbFirst aired 20 Feb 2011A progressive headteacher arrives in 1930s Yorkshire and meets a community where education, local government and private obligations cannot be separated. Anna Maxwell Martin makes institutional change feel like daily work. The three-part Winifred Holtby adaptation is a substantial social drama in a…0
  4. 4Run (2013)Run (2013) 7.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired 15 Jul 2013Four linked episodes follow Londoners whose precarious work, family obligations and encounters with crime cross in consequential ways. Olivia Colman is the first point of entry, rather than the centre of every story. This is the 2013 Channel 4 serial, with an unsentimental interest in who has room…0
  5. 5The Politician's Husband (2013)The Politician's Husband (2013) 7.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired 25 Apr 2013A minister's career reversal becomes a marital crisis when his wife's political prospects improve. David Tennant and Emily Watson make professional entitlement visible in small domestic decisions before it becomes more frightening. The three-part drama is an uncomfortable choice about power and…0
  6. 6The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies (2014)The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies (2014) 7.9/10 on IMDbFirst aired 10 Dec 2014Jason Watkins plays the retired teacher whose arrest, without charge, became an excuse for public character assassination. The two-part dramatisation gives the experience of being misrepresented its own emotional shape. It is a valuable short study of media responsibility, while remaining a…0
  7. 7The Secret Agent (2016)The Secret Agent (2016) 6.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired 17 Jul 2016Toby Jones's Verloc occupies a domestic world whose fragile arrangements are exploited by political schemes. The three-part 2016 Joseph Conrad adaptation makes a supposed spy story painfully dependent on family vulnerability. Choose it for the tension between public rhetoric and private damage,…0
  8. 8The Driver (2014)The Driver (2014) 6.9/10 on IMDbFirst aired 23 Sept 2014A Manchester taxi driver's offer of better-paid work carries him into criminal obligations that cannot stay outside the family home. David Morrissey's ordinary fatigue gives the three-part thriller a persuasive starting point. This is the 2014 British original, with a finite, tightly compressed…0
  9. 9One Night (2012)One Night (2012) 7.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired 26 Mar 2012One consequential London night is reconstructed through four connected perspectives. Changing the person at the centre changes the meaning of actions that seemed settled in an earlier episode. The 2012 British serial is rewarding for a reader who likes testing assumptions about neighbours and…0
  10. 10The 7.39 (2014)The 7.39 (2014) 7.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired 6 Jan 2014A quarrel over a seat on a commuter train develops into an affair between people whose existing lives are not conveniently disposable. David Nicholls's two-part drama gives David Morrissey and Sheridan Smith the work of making an ordinary temptation persuasive. Its appeal is the scale of the…0