Mosaic
This drama boasts its own app, complete with multiple perspectives and background documentation, so viewers can conduct their own research into the case at its heart. Take-up may depend on the strength of the actual story – Steven Soderbergh takes us to rural Utah, where Olivia Lake (Sharon Stone) searches for peace but finds only horror.
Saturday 17 February, 10pm, Sky Atlantic
Unpopped
Aiming to discuss pop culture in serious terms without amputating the fun, this new BBC podcast gets off to a fine start with a fond but forensic dissection of RuPaul’s Drag Race. How has it affected our language? If you’ve ever “thrown shade”, it’s probably down to RuPaul. Elsewhere, is there a tinge of misogyny within drag? Future episodes explore the Spice Girls and Paris Hilton but this sets the bar high.
Podcast
The Tick
Peter Serafinowicz’s absurd and delicious comic-book adaptation returns to resolve its mid-season cliffhangers. In a telly-scape overflowing with self-consciously dark and portentous superheroes, this blue onesie-clad oddity feels like a very welcome change of tone.
Available from Friday 23 February, Amazon Prime
Marcella
A second series for Anna Friel’s bothered and bewildered detective, who transposes the Scandi-cop ethos to London. Perhaps inevitably, her crime-fighting ability is shadowed by the travails of her private life. However, Friel brings edge and heart to a familiar premise.
Monday 19 February, 9pm, ITV
Troy: Fall of a City
The historical epics keep on coming, probably with half an eye on the Game of Thrones-shaped hole in 2018’s TV schedules. This latest one takes us to ancient Greece, where a humble Trojan herdsman sparks a conflict that threatens to jeopardise an empire. Louis Hunter, Jonas Armstrong and Bella Dayne are among those flexing their pecs.
Saturday 17 February, 9.10pm, BBC One
Here and Now
At times, this new offering from Alan “True Blood” Ball feels less like a drama and more like a checklist of Trump-era liberal neuroses. Tim Robbins and Holly Hunter star as the heavy-handed heavy-hitters whose rainbow coalition of biological and adopted children begins to fall apart under the stress of various secrets and lies.
Tuesday 20 February, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
British Academy Film Awards 2018
The Bafta experience will feel very post-Weinstein this year, with Joanna Lumley taking over hosting duties from Stephen Fry and any comic preamble presumably requiring a good deal of pre-show legal red pencil. Big-ticket contenders include The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name and Dunkirk.
Sunday 18 February, 9pm, BBC One
Seven Seconds
An emblematically 2018-sounding new drama starring Regina King, Seven Seconds explores the grim aftermath of a fatal traffic accident involving a white police officer and a black teenager. Racial tensions explode in the light of the cover-up that ensues.
Available from Friday 23 February, Netflix
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Whether the relentless ridicule of wise-ass comics actually helps or hinders Donald Trump is an interesting argument. But there’s no denying that it feels good. Accordingly, John Oliver is back for another series this week – and the fish are sure to be lining up in the barrel to await his return.
Monday 19 February, 10.10pm, Sky Atlantic
The Misfits
Both Marilyn Monroe’s and Clark Gable’s last film, this is a slice of raw Hollywood history. Monroe’s then-husband Arthur Miller provided his only film script, a wordy affair about broken-down rodeo stars gathering for a show in Dayton. Gable’s warm and tender cowboy and Monroe’s sad showgirl embody a poignant sense of the last picture show.
Tuesday 20 February, 3.45pm, Film4
Source https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/feb/16/mosaic-john-oliver-last-week-tick-amazon-baftas-marcella
