Groomed: The Truth Behind the Lie
Documentary exploring the reality of grooming in Barrow-in-Furness
Year: 2026
Certificate: 18
In 2020, Ellie Williams claimed that she had been the victim of an Asian grooming gang operating in the Cumbrian town of Barrow-in-Furness. Her allegations caused uproar, but they were ruled to be a lie – as a result, Ellie was sent to prison for perverting the court of justice for eight and a half years.
Was there a wider truth behind what she said, though? And what is the situation in Barrow today? Ellie was let out after serving four years but can’t talk to the media as a condition of her release so doesn’t take part in this questioning documentary. We do hear extensively from her mother, though, and that strand is part of a dig into the wider story of grooming in Barrow, which opens with a look at how Ellie’s case unfolded.
Filmed over three years, it’s a raw and urgent-feeling three-parter that digs behind the headlines to hear the harrowing experiences of people on the ground and features an impressive array of contributors. (Three episodes)
Furious
Cat-and-mouse thriller about a female serial killer from the writer of Dying For Sex
Year: 2026
Certificate: 18
A female serial killer is taking out men one by one in this dark and edgy thriller, and new FBI Agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) seems to be the only one who can catch her. That’s the premise of Furious, the title of which hints toward the righteous anger that drives the killer, and the shifting perspectives on justice it features along its eight-part length.
Both lead actresses are terrific – Rossum rose to fame on the US version of Shameless and gives Alice a simmering depth, while Lola Petticrew (Trespasses, Say Nothing) is on awards-worthy form in the showier role as the killer she’s tracking.
Writer Elizabeth Meriwether has a history of writing strong shows about very different women, from chirpy sitcom New Girl with Zooey Deschanel as a manic pixie figure, to the corporate fraud Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, to Dying For Sex, with Michelle Williams as a woman rediscovering life in the face of a cancer diagnosis. Furious feels like another intriguing entry in that ever-deepening on-screen CV.
Eight episodes may feel like a lot for a cat-and-mouse story but this is also a show that’s really tangling with an issue – what women should do with righteous anger, what society expects of them, and the consequences of the difference between the two things. For anyone who’s seen one too many TV dramas that open with the body of a dead blonde, Furious should certainly strike a chord. (Eight episodes)
Ted Lasso (Series 4)
The football comedy returns after a three-year gap, with Ted coaching the Richmond women’s side
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
In 2023, we all thought Ted Lasso had finished for good. But it’s hard to say goodbye to success and, three years later, the Apple comedy returns for a fourth series, although as it begins Ted doesn’t look like he’s going back to football anytime soon.
The upbeat American is working at a Midwest supermarket so he can spend more time with his son, but the call of the soccer ball will always be strong for coach Lasso – and it isn’t long before he’s back in Blighty and coaching the Richmond women’s side.
Series four is all about the challenges of making women’s football work in a world that values the men’s game so much more highly. In other words it’s an underdog story, which is exactly what the show was at the start. Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and Brett Goldstein all return as Ted, Rebecca, Keeley and sweary old Roy Kent, while cast additions include Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) as assistant coach Alice.
If you like the original you’ll enjoy this, too, although there’s a bit of scene-setting to get out of the way before the story really starts. Look out for some real-world women’s football references as it goes on -– they were careful to consult actual players, such as Lioness Leah Williamson, so the show could reflect real themes and issues in the women’s game today. (Ten episodes)
Richard E. Grant’s Very Modern Odyssey
The suave actor embarks on a journey inspired by the epic film
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
The suave Richard E. Grant hops around the Mediterranean in a four-part series inspired by Christopher Nolan’s film that was, in turn, based on Homer’s epic poem.
The Odyssey follows our wily hero on his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War as he copes with angry gods, the one-eyed Cyclops and being kept bewitched in a cave by the stunning nymph Calypso. ‘She insisted on having a lot of carnal relations,’ says Grant, adding with a cheeky grin: ‘Odysseus is so devastated by this he stays for seven years.’
Grant visits a cave with a glorious view on the Maltese island of Gozo to tell the story. The archaeologist who joins him claims it’s a contender for Calypso’s cave – ‘this is the beauty of Homer, it’s a very democratic story, it is open to interpretation.’ Or to put it another way, it’s a work of fiction, so the cave could be anywhere locals want it to be.
While the Withnail And I star says he’s loved Homer’s ‘riveting yarn’ since he read it as a teenager, the links to the epic poem are tenuous in part one. Instead, he spends a large part of it bewitched by the beauty of Malta, ticking off something on his bucket list with a visit to St John’s Co-Cathedral in the capital, where he’s ‘flabbergasted’ by its glittering interior – ‘It’s like baroque on steroids.’
He does then head to the genuine site of the ancient city of Troy, now in north-west Turkey, and in the three parts to come he visits Sicily, Tunisia, Corfu and the island of Ithaca. It might ultimately be just another celebrity travelogue, but he’s a genuinely enthusiastic and thoroughly engaging travelling companion. (Four episodes)
Joe And David’s Magical Sitcom Tour
Sitcom-related travelogue with Joe Wilkinson and David Earl
Year: 2026
Certificate: pg
For this very jolly and easy-to-watch comedy-themed travelogue, Joe Wilkinson and David Earl – who wrote sitcom The Cockfields together – take each other on a tour through the worlds of their favourite sitcoms.
The three shows are Porridge, Fawlty Towers and The Office, and the pair start with Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’s great prison comedy, a sitcom watched by a young Joe Wilkinson. It remained his favourite show as an adult, so much so that, apparently, he turned down the opportunity to audition for the lead when the reboot came along in 2016.
There’s a short glimpse into what that performance might have been like when he and David give the script a little read-through here, but Wilkinson still seems a bit reluctant to give it a proper go, which is a shame.
If you like hearing fresh insights on shows you thought you couldn’t possibly hear more about, then this show will be a delight. And the way in which Joe and David seem so determined to surprise each other during their respective tours gives it a delightful edge. Don’t miss the bit in the car with the pretend Ronnie Barker. (Three episodes)
The Shards
Teen horror based on the youth of Bret Easton Ellis starring the children of Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford
Year: 2026
Certificate: 18
This slick mix of thriller and teen horror is based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis but, more than that, it’s a semi-autobiographical story about the American Psycho author’s youth. Set at a privileged school in Los Angeles in the 1980s, it follows 17-year-old Bret (Igby Rigney) as he comes into the orbit of intriguing new student Robert Mallory, whose arrival just happens to align with a string of murders attributed to a serial killer dubbed ‘The Trawler’.
So, is Mallory the killer? How far will Bret fall into the world of this mysterious stranger? And will the murders impinge on his close circle of wealthy, hard-partying friends?
The Shards comes from flashy American producer Ryan Murphy, so expect plenty of style – think of it as a much darker Gossip Girl and you may not be too far off the mark.
The chief interest on the cast is probably Homer Gere as Mallory – he’s the son of actor Richard, previously seen in series three of Euphoria – but look out too for Kaia Gerber, daughter of Richard’s ex Cindy Crawford. There’s more generational talent behind the camera as the director is Max Minghella, son of the late Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella. (Nine episodes)
The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door
The inside story of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal
Year: 2026
When the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were brought into a hospital in Salisbury in March 2018, it became apparent that they had been poisoned by his former spymasters using the nerve agent Novichok. That such an attack could have taken place on British soil, and particularly in such a sleepy place as Salisbury, was shocking, and this feature-length, CNN-produced documentary tells the story of it all from the inside.
We hear from Dr Stephen Cockroft, an intensive care consultant who remembers Sergei and Yulia coming into the hospital; from Amber Rudd and Theresa May – the Home Secretary and Prime Minister at the time; from Richard Dearlove and John Sawers, former heads of MI6; and from Viktor Makarov, a former KGB officer who now lives in the UK, having graduated at the same time as Vladimir Putin.
This insider perspective makes you realise how events could easily have gone another way – it could have been seen as an act of war – and offers insight into the Russian approach to disinformation, with one contributor observing how, in the Russian mindset, lying and everyone knowing you are lying – but carrying on anyway – is a sign of power.
Thankfully, both Sergei and his daughter survived the attack. They disappeared afterwards, but we hear from Sergei, after a fashion, through a reading of the statement he made to police before he left. (79 minutes)
Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy
Comedian Mo Gilligan explores the reality of the industry
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Every year, 78 billion chickens are killed to satisfy the world’s appetite for the meat, and Mo Gilligan has certainly played his part in fuelling that in the past. The comedian has been a keen consumer of the protein-rich food in all its incarnations – roasted, curried, jerked – but in particular the fried variety and, for this documentary, he embarks on a Supersize Me-style experiment by spending 28 days eating nothing but fried chicken.
The doctor he visits beforehand says she doesn’t ‘want to scare him’ about the potential consequences for doing this but, as the film goes on, the subject isn’t so much about the impact on his waistline or internal organs. The focus becomes the chicken industry itself – the ‘big chicken’ of the title – with Mo heading to the US to explore the conditions in which they are farmed, both for the doomed birds and for the workers that process them.
Gilligan compares the latter experience to ‘modern-day slavery’. Later, he puts his investigative journalist hat on to embark on a similar mission in the UK, and all this while chewing his way through three meals of fried chicken every day.
That side of the documentary will certainly stay with you long after watching the film while the impact on Gilligan himself, both physically and mentally – revealed when he visits the doctor at the end – features some alarming news. (96 minutes)
Possession (2026 series)
Tense supernatural thriller starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Jonny Lee Miller
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jonny Lee Miller and Bel Powley star in a tense supernatural thriller that unfolds over five episodes between Bristol and Jamaica. The story follows lawyer Claudia (Mbatha-Raw) as she journeys to the Caribbean island to work on a controversial inheritance claim between a local and aristocrat Oliver Connaught (Miller).
The claim involves a house that was once a Connaught plantation and a creaking, creepy property that – to Claudia’s alarm – has been appearing in her dreams. What is the connection between her and the house, and should she heed the advice she receives to just ‘stay away’?
We wouldn’t have much of a thriller if she did, and Possession gives us some seriously sinister moments as Claudia and the very British Oliver find themselves pitched into a journey that digs into the horrors of his family’s past and sees how they still echo in the present. Bel Powley, who plays Oliver’s ancestor Charlotte in the flashbacks, gives the standout performance in a show flips between past and present as it goes on, and which benefits hugely from filming extensively in Jamaica.
Filming locations included the Old Gaol House, a real-life prison that survived an earthquake in 1692 that killed 2,000 people. (Five episodes)
Song Sung Blue
Drama about a Neil Diamond tribute act starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
This film about the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, a Midwest Neil Diamond tribute act, had the potential to be enormously cheesy but it turns out to be irresistible – and a good part of why is the cast.
Mike and Claire are played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. Mike is a Vietnam veteran with a drinking problem he’s currently on top of, while Claire is a singer he meets who inspires him and together they form a Neil Diamond ‘experience’ and marry each other into the bargain, bringing their single-parent families together.
The rise of Lightning & Thunder (Mike and Claire) is a testament to the power of dreams over reality, and one that leads to the duo, pretty early on, to open for top rockers Pearl Jam. Real life does intrude on those dreams, though, and in pretty violent fashion – still, Song Sung Blue is a film that leaves you much better than it finds you by the time the credits roll.
Hudson’s top-notch performance has earned her an Oscar nomination and it really is the heart of the film, but we shouldn’t forget that both her and Jackman are also seasoned musical performers, and that really helps when it comes to delivering Sweet Caroline and such.
Special mention must also go to The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli, playing a sweet Buddy Holly impersonator who joins Lightning & Thunder – just watch his face when they’re going on stage to open for Pearl Jam. (132 minutes)
The Last House
Sci-fi survival thriller starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura
Year: 2026
Certificate: 12
Anyone who’s ever gone stir crazy over a weekend with family will be able to relate to this creepy thriller. It takes that concept and escalates it as, one day, a family of four find they cannot get out of their home – they’ve been sealed in by an unknown force. This goes on for days, weeks and months and, much like during Covid, it emerges that it’s not just them. This seems to be happening all over the world. Why, and where will it end?
Greta Lee (Past Lives) and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) star in a thriller that slowly builds the tension, even taking us into stretches of jollity as the family come together in their shared imprisonment. Ultimately, though, they must come to terms with what is keeping them inside, and it’s there that the film really starts to take no prisoners in the tension stakes, and leads the viewer down some surprising alleyways in the process.
Moura and Lee are neatly offbeat choices for the leads in what is essentially a sci-fi survival thriller, and they lend the film an appealing indie edge. (110 minutes)
Ann Droid
Diane Morgan and Sue Johnston team up for a quirky sitcom
Year: 2026
Certificate: 12
Mandy and Philomena Cunk comedian Diane Morgan stars as a humanoid care robot, assigned to help recently widowed Sue (Sue Johnston) live independently in this six-part sitcom. Written by Morgan and Sarah Kendall (who created the BAFTA-nominated Frayed), it offers a playful look at whether robotic droids might one day offer something resembling genuine companionship.
Sue is given Linda – a secondhand ‘AnnDroid Z58/100 Basic Eldercare Robot’ -– by her son Michael (Motherland’s Paul Ready), who is moving out of the house he’s been sharing with his mother to try to fix his failing marriage. Linda is a socially inept early model, delivering a steady stream of misunderstandings and disorder, while an unexpected bond between human and bot steadily forms.
The opening episode takes a while to find its rhythm. Some early repeated jokes wear thin, and the mother-son dynamic initially feels more strained than amusing. Stick with it though, because once Linda arrives, the comedy sharpens considerably as the dry humour and awkward exchanges that have defined Morgan’s past work come to the fore, particularly through Linda’s painfully literal observations.
Beneath the laughs, themes of grief, loneliness and embracing life at an older age give the series emotional grounding. Despite its slower start, Morgan’s robotic delivery paired with the sharply observed writing makes Ann Droid an odd, charming and ultimately rewarding treat. (Six episodes)
The Vampire Lestat
Interview With The Vampire’s rock star Lestat takes centre stage
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
The third in the Interview with the Vampire series based on Anne Rice’s famous novels renames itself after its hedonistic, charismatic and self-consumed lead, centuries-old vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid).
Lestat is now a rock star, an ‘out’ vampire of sorts, who wears his vampire persona as armour. His fans lap it up, believing it a ‘bawdy burlesque of is he or isn’t he’, but by the end of the first episode, Lestat’s secret is out, and he returns to the bosom of his great love, his mother Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle).
The rest of the series delves deeper into Lestat’s complicated relationship with Gabriella as he wrestles with the ‘failures’ which both inspire and torment him. It’s an extravagant helter-skelter descent into how the vampire Lestat was made, that also promises a hotly anticipated encounter with the mother of all vampires, Queen of the Damned Akasha herself.
Sam Reid’s performance is glorious in its excess and commitment (he sings all his own songs). He plays the rock god Lestat as part Marc Bolan, part Iggy Pop, part Michael Hutchence (who he at times eerily resembles) – all glitter and glam, and a character so big the stage or screen can barely contain him.
But he leans into the humour and pathos, too, narrating his story in the most unreliable but eloquent of ways, and speaking only as someone who has lived 265 years can. ‘Gods are not swiped,’ he says, as he observes that ‘the dark, dreary industrial world has finally submitted to automation’.
It’s enormous fun, far less sombre and brooding than the earlier series, and a riot of colour and camp from start to finish. (Seven episodes)
MasterChef Australia
The warm Aussie version of the cooking contest, co-judged by Jean-Christophe Novelli
Year: 2009-
Certificate: 12
When the Aussie version of this culinary contest began way back in 2009, we didn’t know what to expect – but it was a true delight. Back then, MasterChef Australia was hosted and judged by larger-than-life food critic Matt Preston and chefs Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris, a trio who seemed to forge genuine bonds with the contestants. By the time the final came around, you really cared about who was going to win because they so clearly did, too.
Matt, Gary and George left the show after a decade, and were replaced by series four winner Andy Allen, food critic Melissa Leong and chef Jock Zonfrillo. They were a good enough replacement and the show went on for four more series, until Zonfrillo’s sudden, shocking death in 2023. Leong left and Allen was joined by another ex-contender – popular first series runner-up Poh Ling Yeow – along with chef Jean-Christophe Novelli and food critic Sofia Levin.
That brings us up to date on a show which, while quite a viewing commitment, remains a warm and highly entertaining one 17 series down the track. There aren’t many cooking contests that can say the same and the calibre of guests it regularly attracts (Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and local legend Curtis Stone to name but four, all of whom are treated like gods by the contenders) are testament to that.
If you’re looking for an alternative to the UK original, then it’s more than worth a try. The latest 18th series will be found on U and, later in the run, features Meghan Markle as a guest judge. (18 series)
Sterling Point
Addictive drama about reuniting sisters and family secrets on a Canadian island
Year: 2026
Sterling Point is one of those shows that look like a teen drama on the surface, but are so well written that their appeal will likely be wider. It’s the story of young, uptight New Yorker Annie, whose summer plans are thrown up in the air and who has had the same, gay boyfriend at school for years.
One day, she learns that her mother’s father has died – and secrets starts to slowly tumble out about that side of the family. Her dad isn’t telling her anything so Annie heads to the Canadian island where her grandfather lived, and a voyage of discovery begins, including meeting the sister she never knew she had.
Ella Rubin is amusingly tense and unpredictable as Annie, a character who clearly has some growing to do on this laidback island she now calls some kind of home. Among the adult cast, look out for The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan as gruff but nice Joe and Missi Pyle as Denise, who is hilariously indiscreet when she’s drunk.
Unusually for a show like this, it’s not based on a book but comes from Megan Park, who wrote and directed My Old Ass, a movie comedy that is much better than its title implies. (Eight episodes)
The Five-Star Weekend
Jennifer Garner stars in a drama about women finding their true selves on Nantucket
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
When high-flying food blogger Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) loses her husband, her world seems to fall apart – and all she wants is a distraction. That distraction comes in the form of a weekend away with friends from different parts of her life, at a fancy house in Nantucket, and that weekend is the basis of this eight-part drama based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand.
Hilderbrand also wrote The Perfect Couple, which was also set in Nantucket. That was a murder mystery adapted with some style for Netflix and starring Nicole Kidman, but The Five-Star Weekend is much more of a drama about women coming to terms with where they are in their lives. It’s no less moreish, though.
The cast is top drawer, and includes Chloe Sevigny as the understandably bitter Tatum, Regina Hall as Dru-Ann, a woman with work issues, D’Arcy Carden as Brooke – whose husband is asking a lot of her – and Gemma Chan as Gigi, a more recent associate of Hollis. The result is a show that is so easy to watch you barely notice the episodes slip by, in between the quality of the cast and the loveliness of the setting.
It will be back for a second series. (Eight episodes)
Benidorm Is Murder
Cosy crime drama set in Spain starring John Hannah
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Say hello to TV’s latest crime-fighting duo. Dennis Crown is a burned-out ex-police officer hiding behind a failing Scottish pub in Benidorm. Rosa is an aspiring actress, obsessed with classic British crime shows. Together, they’re the last people you would trust to solve a murder – but they keep solving them all the same.
In this six-part slice of sunny crime, John Hannah plays Dennis and Carolina Becquer is Rosa, who in the opening episode help Spanish detective Maria Hernandez (Ariadna Cabrol) to figure out what happened to a member of a Take That tribute act, whose body ended up in a hotel pool. (Six episodes)
Lucky (2026 series)
Anya Taylor-Joy stars in a seven-part crime thriller about a heist gone wrong
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Anya Taylor-Joy stars in a seven-part crime thriller that starts in high gear and stays there. Adapted from Marissa Stapley’s novel by Jonathan Tropper (also the man behind Apple’s Your Friends & Neighbours), Lucky is the story of a couple who pull off a daring heist, only for something to go wrong – leaving Lucky Armstrong (Taylor-Joy) on the run from both the law and outlaws in Las Vegas.
Sporting various haircuts and colours as the show pushes on and with her character caught somewhere between victim and action hero, Taylor-Joy is a compelling presence at the centre of this twisting tale. The wider cast also features Justified’s Timothy Olyphant as her jailbird dad and the great Annette Bening as a pivotal character whose nature we won’t reveal here. Rest assured you won’t miss her when she turns up, though.
Taken as a whole, the series manages to feel both gritty and glossy, familiar and different – like Lucky herself, its style sits somewhere between pulp fiction and class act, but the one thing that’s certain is that it’ll pull you eagerly from one episode to the next.
To learn more about the series, read our Inside Story here. (Seven episodes)
Alley Cats
Ricky Gervais’s terrible, extremely sweary animated comedy about mangy moggies getting into trouble
Year: 2026
Certificate: 18
There are some familiar voices and a lot of swearing in this animated comedy from Ricky Gervais, not least Gervais himself – as the particularly potty-mouthed head cat of a group of mangy moggies who roam around looking for friends and getting into trouble.
Listen out for Kerry Godliman, Diane Morgan, Tom Basden, Natalie Cassidy and David Earl elsewhere on the voice cast of a series that, if you like your cats to act cute, may miss the mark.
What Gervais seems to be aiming to capture is the glory of life as a free feral feline, along with an amusing line of incongruous philosophical discussions that could tickle a Creature Comforts-style comedy itch. The animals in that series would never swear this much, though, or even at all and, for some people, five minutes of Alley Cats will be enough because the swearing makes it almost impossible to appreciate what’s actually being said.
Is Gervais trying to break some kind of record with all the profanity? (Six episodes)
