TV: Making A Murderer
Serial casts a long shadow over the true-crime documentary genre. Following the likes of HBO’s The Jinx and Channel 4’s The Murder Detectives, this Netflix series is the latest to burnish a criminal investigation with a longform, box set sheen. It tells the story of Steven Avery, an American man convicted and exonerated of assault who, on his release, finds himself accused of murder in an entirely different case. Forensic and fast-moving, it looks a series well suited to the all-in-one-sitting model of the modern-day streaming service. It’s available in full from Friday.
Netflix
TV: Josh
Josh Widdicombe is the latest TV personality to develop a sitcom that mines a less well-adjusted version of themselves for comic effect. Josh features Widdicombe as a cheerfully inept stand-up, living with uni pals and undergoing all the trials of twentysomething urban life. It’s anything but groundbreaking but is amiable enough and features decent turns from Jack Dee and Beattie Edmondson as his landlord and flatmate respectively.
TV: Fargo
The second season of this Coen Brothers spinoff has been just as addictive as the first, introducing another monstrous set of villains in the shape of the Gerhardt family, more conflicted ordinary folks gone bad (the Blumquists), and another everyman hero in the shape of charming state trooper Lou Solverson. Superb television; the moral and aesthetic values of the film lend themselves perfectly to the small-screen cop drama. Catch recent episodes on All 4.
TV: Ash vs Evil Dead
Wiping from our collective memories the literal horror show that was the 2013 reboot of Evil Dead is this new spinoff series, which returns the franchise to its scuzzy, funny, low-budget roots. Crucially, Bruce Campbell reprises his role as rubber-faced renegade Ash Williams, and at 30 minutes an episode, the whole thing rarely outstays its welcome. Virgin customers can catch the series so far on demand, with new episodes being added shortly after US transmission.
Virgin Media
Radio: Liam Williams: Ladhood
Sheeps member and cataloguer of Generation Y ennui Liam Williams is the latest up-and-coming comic to be handed his own Radio 4 series. Ladhood sees him recount moments from his Leeds upbringing – fights, romantic entanglements, house parties – in florid, heraldic monologues, intercut with re-enactments by Yorkshire teens. The results are daft, nostalgic and more than a little affecting.
