Television
Tina
This intimate documentary is both a celebration of a pioneering superstar and the story of a remarkable woman who overcame extreme adversity throughout her life. Featuring interviews with the “Queen of R&B” herself, it charts her story from her early days in Tennessee to her breakthrough 1960s success and her 80s renaissance.
Sunday 28 March, 9pm, Sky Documentaries
Britain’s Tiger Kings: On the Trail With Ross Kemp
It’s a year since Netflix gave us Joe Exotic, now Ross Kemp goes in search of the UK’s big cat owners. With approximately 4,000 wild animals kept privately in Britain, Kemp explores the ethical problems behind their exotic pet obsessions.
Tuesday 30 March, 9pm, ITV
The Syndicate
Kay Mellor’s amiable drama series about different groups of people getting lucky on shared lottery tickets returns for a fourth series, six years since it was last on our screens. Neil Morrissey leads the cast in a story about a group of underpaid workers at Woodvale Kennels whose dreams of a lottery win are dashed when their ticket is stolen.
Tuesday 30 March, 9pm, BBC One
Imagine: Kazuo Ishiguro
Alan Yentob’s insightful arts profile series brings a new episode focused on the Nobel prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. The novelist recounts his childhood growing up in Nagasaki, as well as his love of music and lyrical sensibilities in his storytelling.
Sunday 28 March, 10.30pm, BBC One
Pandemic 2020
Episode one of this three-part series – filmed across 21 countries using a mix of local film-makers and archive footage – focuses on the start of the pandemic. Opening with crowds celebrating New Year’s Eve 2019, we then hear from people in Wuhan.
Thursday 1 April, 9pm, BBC Two
Worn Stories
This series, based on Emily Spivack’s best-selling book, explores how our identities are stitched into the fabric of our clothing. Featuring interviews with everyone from drag acts to astronauts, the series shows clothing’s ability to inspire rebellion, connote comfort and evoke nostalgia.
Thursday 1 April, Netflix
Keeping Faith
Eve Myles returns as Faith Howells in the third and final series of this Welsh drama about a woman investigating the disappearance of her husband. It picks up 18 months after series two, with Faith locked in a custody battle. Things aren’t helped when a figure from her past returns.
Saturday 27 March, 9pm, BBC One
Prank Encounters
Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo returns as chief prankster for the second season of this Punk’d-lite, horror-themed hidden-camera show. Two members of the public try out for a new job, (supposedly) unaware they are surrounded by actors and that everything is about to get very bizarre, very quickly.
Thursday 1 March, Netflix
Finding Jack Charlton
Filmed during the last 18 months of his life, this feature-length documentary acts as a portrait of the England World Cup-winning great turned Irish folk hero as he lived with dementia. Directed by Gabriel Clarke, it features interviews with Charlton’s family on the effects of his memory loss, alongside rich archive footage of his heyday.
Monday 29 March, 9pm, BBC Two
Paloma Faith: As I Am
New mum and pop star Paloma Faith takes us behind the scenes of the tour promoting her 2017 album The Architect, navigating the pressures of motherhood as well as the demands of a make-or-break year that could see her take off in the US.
Saturday 27 March, 9pm, BBC Two
Podcasts
The Horne Section
Taskmaster number two and funnyman Alex Horne returns with a new season of his musical podcast series featuring his band the Horne Section. The group will be livestreaming a gig on Friday as a special episode, while the rest of the series sees guests such as comics Nina Conti, Rachel Parris and Jessica Knappett joining the band for musical shenanigans.
From Friday 2 April, widely available
Nothing Is Concrete
London arts venue the Barbican’s weekly podcast series delves into the lives and careers of the artists whose works have graced its halls. Among recent episodes, there is a fun exploration of choreographer Michael Clark’s legacy and a lively conversation with Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola.
Weekly, widely available
Football Weekly
With the World Cup qualifiers under way and the findings of the Sheldon report into sexual abuse in British football resonating throughout the sport, there is plenty for Max Rushden and his team to get into during their lively podcast. Recent highlights have included discussing a new era for the Champions League, and the power of Manchester City.
Weekly, the Guardian
Songs to Live By
Radio 1’s Vick Hope celebrates black culture in this podcast series, with guests from different generations reflecting on the music that has come to score their lives. We start with Rizzle Kicks’s Jordan Stephens on his love for Mike Skinner’s the Streets, as well as the poet Benjamin Zephaniah on dub, reggae and his fan letter to Bob Marley.
Weekly, BBC Sounds
The Art of Longevity
Eschewing the in-the-moment musical deconstruction of series such as Song Exploder, this new podcast from Keith Jopling explores the long game. Each episode speaks to a band whose career has spanned decades and whose success has ebbed and flowed as tastes have shifted around them.
Weekly, widely available
Film
Ammonite (15)
(Francis Lee) 118 mins, on digital platforms
Lee follows God’s Own Country with another finely wrought tale of unconventional love. Kate Winslet is exceptional as the taciturn Mary Anning, a talented, real-life 19th-century palaeontologist patronised by the male scientific establishment. Saoirse Ronan plays young wife Charlotte, whose rest cure in Lyme Regis brings her into Mary’s orbit.
Memories of My Father (No cert)
(Fernando Trueba) 136 mins, Curzon Home Cinema
What starts out as a rose-tinted memoir of a public-spirited Colombian medical professor takes on a tragic dimension as his country slides into violence in the 1980s. Nicolás Reyes Cano and Juan Pablo Urrego – as boy and young man – play the son of Héctor Abad Gómez (a twinkling Javier Cámara).
He Dreams of Giants (15)
(Keith Fulton/Louis Pepe) 84 mins, on digital, out Monday 29 March
In 2002, Lost in La Mancha documented Terry Gilliam’s ill-fated attempt to film Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The same team reunite here for the revived The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. It turns out for the best, mostly, but the birth pangs are palpable.
Malmkrog (12)
(Cristi Puiu) 201 mins, on digital
A festival favourite, the Romanian director’s French-language historical drama about aristocratic Russians is a defiantly cerebral tale. It centres on a day of wining and dining in a manor house where five friends debate – at great length – good and evil, civilisation, Christianity and more.
Tom & Jerry (PG)
(Tim Story) 101 mins, on digital
The cat-and-mouse adversaries bring their slapstick shtick to a New York hotel in this part animated, part live-action comedy. Thankfully they still don’t talk, so the likes of Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña and Rob Delaney are there for the punchlines.
Border
Ali Abbasi’s Swedish crime drama-cum-horror fantasy from 2019 is a brilliant, bold take on the lives of outsiders. It focuses on solitary customs officer Tina (Eva Melander), who has unusual facial features and a remarkable sense of smell. When she meets the mysterious Vore (Eero Milonoff), who resembles her, her sense of identity is ripped apart.
Sunday 28 March, 1.50am, Film4
