sat 30/08/2025

documentary

Stealing Shakespeare, BBC One

Raymond Scott, antiquarian bookseller or purveyor of dodgy goods? Let the jury decide

“Well! It is now publique,...

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The Men Who Jump Off Buildings, Channel 4

The ace of base: Dan Witchalls is one of 'The Men Who Jump off Buildings'

There may be many benefits to living at the top of the Erno Goldfinger-designed Trellick Tower in north Kensington – the extensive views across London, perhaps, or the knowledge that one is inhabiting an iconic example of Brutalist architecture....

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Who Do You Think You Are? - Rupert Everett, BBC One

Rupert Everett knows who he is: he is English, he’s a toff and he’s a poof, thank you very much. And that’s just about all you need to know to tell you that, as a breed, they’re pretty damned sure of themselves, these English toffs, poofs or not....

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Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers, Channel 4

Where can or will television’s thirst for tabloid anthropology fetch up? In previous tribal exchanges, wives have been swapped, geeks have gone to babe school, thugs to boot camp, WAGs to townships, Papua New Guineans to the big smoke. Posh girls...

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The Fairy Jobmother, Channel 4

Hayley Taylor's 'Highway Road to Success': A crash course for winners - or a dead end?

No-nonsense Hayley Taylor is to the terminally unemployed what Jo Frost, aka Supernanny, is to the attention-seeking, tantrum-prone pre-schooler – but without the naughty step. In this reality three-parter she attempts to do what whole governments...

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Living with Brucie, Channel 4

Bruce Forsyth and wife Wilnelia Merced-Forsyth act naturally for the cameras

So was it nice to see him (to see him nice)? Actually nice is probably the wrong word for Bruce Forsyth on the evidence of the opening documentary in a new series of Cutting Edge – tetchy, obsessive in his habits and (as we shall see) sometimes...

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Concorde’s Last Flight, Channel 4

As an 11-year-old boy, I was awestruck from the first moment I saw Concorde on our three-channel black-and-white television, seemingly rearing up from its runway like a cyborg swan. At that age - and during that era - fact and fiction became...

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Storyville: Leaving the Cult, BBC Four

Joe, Sam and Bruce may be three callow teenagers from southern Utah but they’re still smart enough to realise that the only world they have ever known is wrong, deeply wrong. So wrong, in fact, that they make the hardest decision of their lives by...

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Forever Young, BBC Four

Insurance salesman James Osterberg likes to let his hair down in the evening

Appropriately enough, Forever Young began with the primal beat of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life". What I consider to be Mr Pop’s “My Way” seems to perfectly sum up the pumped-up and apparently unstoppable forward momentum of the man himself and his...

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The Untold Battle of Trafalgar, Channel 4

'The Untold Battle of Trafalgar': that fateful day re-enacted in Jeremy Hardy's documentary

If you happen to be in Trafalgar Square in London any time soon, you should take a close look at the friezes that adorn the ground portion of Nelson’s Column. For there you will find, most unexpectedly, that one of the sailors depicted is a black...

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Peckham Finishing School For Girls, BBC Three

We know the format: take a bunch of posh, privileged types - held up as examples of cluelessness when it comes to how “ordinary” people live by privileged, overpaid TV executives - and plonk them down in the middle of some dodgy council estate....

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True Stories: We Live in Public, More4

The fears of a clown: Dot-com pioneer Josh Harris learnt that the future isn't always bright

With the last ever series of Big Brother dominating Channel Four’s schedules for the rest of the summer, the first TV screening of this Sundance Film Festival award-winner couldn’t have been better timed. Because the chillingly disconcerting “art...

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