Rebecca, Netflix, 21st October
Any attempt to adapt Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca will inevitably draw comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 masterpiece—your Mr de Winter will be held up against Laurence Olivier’s, your Rebecca to Joan Fontaine’s. In Netflix’s new television-only film, Armie Hammer, as the former, is quietly superb; Lily James makes an adorable ingénue. And anyone who marvelled at Kristin Scott Thomas’s iciness in Fleabag should ready themselves for the moment she is introduced as the conniving Mrs Danvers.
Small Axe, BBC One, November
Steve McQueen, Oscar-winning director of 12 Years a Slave, is one of the most prolific artists of his generation. He has directed and co-written all five of the hour-long dramas that make up Small Axe. Dramatising real-life stories of London’s West Indian community, the series opens with “Mangrove,” the true story of the Mangrove Nine. This group of nine men and women were tried for inciting a riot in 1970, after protesting against police targeting of a Caribbean restaurant in west London that had become a meeting place for radicals and intellectuals.
Being Frank, BBC Two, October
In June 2004, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were targeted by al-Qaeda sympathisers while filming in Saudi Arabia. They were shot six times. Cumbers was killed and Gardner left for dead with spinal damage that left him partially paralysed. He has used a wheelchair ever since. In this film, Gardner reckons with a disability that he has never been able to accept.
Any attempt to adapt Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca will inevitably draw comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 masterpiece—your Mr de Winter will be held up against Laurence Olivier’s, your Rebecca to Joan Fontaine’s. In Netflix’s new television-only film, Armie Hammer, as the former, is quietly superb; Lily James makes an adorable ingénue. And anyone who marvelled at Kristin Scott Thomas’s iciness in Fleabag should ready themselves for the moment she is introduced as the conniving Mrs Danvers.
Small Axe, BBC One, November
Steve McQueen, Oscar-winning director of 12 Years a Slave, is one of the most prolific artists of his generation. He has directed and co-written all five of the hour-long dramas that make up Small Axe. Dramatising real-life stories of London’s West Indian community, the series opens with “Mangrove,” the true story of the Mangrove Nine. This group of nine men and women were tried for inciting a riot in 1970, after protesting against police targeting of a Caribbean restaurant in west London that had become a meeting place for radicals and intellectuals.
Being Frank, BBC Two, October
In June 2004, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were targeted by al-Qaeda sympathisers while filming in Saudi Arabia. They were shot six times. Cumbers was killed and Gardner left for dead with spinal damage that left him partially paralysed. He has used a wheelchair ever since. In this film, Gardner reckons with a disability that he has never been able to accept.
