The Serpent, BBC One & Netflix, January 2021
True crime dramas have become increasingly prominent in recent years—with ratings to match—and that trend is only accelerating in the new year. This eight-part drama promises to broaden the possibilities of the genre, even as it brings a monstrous murder spree back to light. It tells the story of how Charles Sobhraj—responsible for the murders of young western travellers on the “hippy trail” across southeast Asia in the 1970s—was finally brought to justice after becoming Interpol’s most wanted man.
573 Votes, Sky Documentaries, 16th December 2020
After the drama of 2020’s US presidential election, this HBO documentary takes us back two decades to the showdown between George W Bush and Al Gore in one of the closest ever elections. The presidency was decided in Florida, where the margin was 0.0092 per cent, or 573 votes, of nearly six million cast. Billy Corben’s documentary explores how one event, the custody fight over a five-year-old Cuban boy Elián González, contributed to the recount in Florida.
It’s a Sin, Channel 4, early 2021
With dramas such as Queer as Folk and Cucumber, Russell T Davies has done as much as any television dramatist to bring queer stories to a mainstream British audience. This five-part series follows five 18-year-olds who move to London in 1981; set over a decade, it tackles gay life in Britain and the Aids epidemic. In 1981, there were 270 reported cases of severe immunodeficiency in gay men in the US. By the decade’s end, the World Health Organisation estimated 400,000 cases of Aids worldwide.
True crime dramas have become increasingly prominent in recent years—with ratings to match—and that trend is only accelerating in the new year. This eight-part drama promises to broaden the possibilities of the genre, even as it brings a monstrous murder spree back to light. It tells the story of how Charles Sobhraj—responsible for the murders of young western travellers on the “hippy trail” across southeast Asia in the 1970s—was finally brought to justice after becoming Interpol’s most wanted man.
573 Votes, Sky Documentaries, 16th December 2020
After the drama of 2020’s US presidential election, this HBO documentary takes us back two decades to the showdown between George W Bush and Al Gore in one of the closest ever elections. The presidency was decided in Florida, where the margin was 0.0092 per cent, or 573 votes, of nearly six million cast. Billy Corben’s documentary explores how one event, the custody fight over a five-year-old Cuban boy Elián González, contributed to the recount in Florida.
It’s a Sin, Channel 4, early 2021
With dramas such as Queer as Folk and Cucumber, Russell T Davies has done as much as any television dramatist to bring queer stories to a mainstream British audience. This five-part series follows five 18-year-olds who move to London in 1981; set over a decade, it tackles gay life in Britain and the Aids epidemic. In 1981, there were 270 reported cases of severe immunodeficiency in gay men in the US. By the decade’s end, the World Health Organisation estimated 400,000 cases of Aids worldwide.
