TV: Murdered By My Father
BBC3’s 2014 one-off Murdered By My Boyfriend was a necessary piece of television, highlighting the dangers of domestic abuse via a fact-based drama that went on to win a Bafta for its lead actor Georgina Campbell. This follow-up of sorts highlights the troubling prevalence of “honour-based” crimes in the UK – more than 11,000 of which have been reported since 2010 – via the story of Salma (Kiran Sonia Sawar), who is forced into an engagement by her widowed father (Utopia’s Adeel Akhtar) but is in love with another man. Events build with grim inevitability. Available from 6pm on Tuesday.
TV: Fear The Walking Dead
Ahead of season two (premiering on BT’s AMC channel in early April), Amazon has nabbed the first run of this Walking Dead spin-off. Dealing with the early days of the zombie outbreak – which is in full force in the Walking Dead – it’s more languorous and atmospheric than its parent series, with a bigger emphasis on family drama. Which isn’t to say that it’s lacking in big set-pieces or gleefully gory moments – this is the undead we’re talking about, after all. Available from Sunday.
Amazon Prime
TV: Dark Laughs
For a corporation often characterised as being excessively timid, the BBC has produced an impressive amount of boundary-pushing comedy. This BBC Store collection celebrates some of its most macabre efforts, from Julia Davis’s Nighty Night and Human Remains to the work of League Of Gentlemen alumni Pemberton, Shearsmith and Gatiss, and Vic and Bob’s utterly gonzo road-trip comedy Catterick.
Audio: Alice Isn’t Dead
No podcast has demonstrated the possibilities of the medium better than Welcome To Night Vale, the mock community radio show for a Stephen King-like town, which just gets weirder and more engrossing as it goes on. Its creators are hoping to repeat the trick with Alice Isn’t Dead, a new serialised story about a truck journey across a fantastical and frequently horrifying landscape. Like its predecessor it plants clues and then expects the audience to run with them. Given how popular Night Vale has proved, you expect they might.
TV: The Characters
An example of Netflix’s hands-off approach to talent, this series hands eight up-and-coming comics their own half-hour slot to build a sketch show in. Results, predictably, are a bit mixed: Orange Is The New Black star Lauren Lapkus’s grotesque character comedy feels a bit unfocused, but Edinburgh winner Dr Brown’s instalment is wonderfully woozy and whimsical.
Netflix
