TV: Grace And Frankie
Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda relive their 9 To 5 collaboration in this Netflix sitcom about two spouses jilted by their respective husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston), who announce suddenly that they are both gay and in love with each other. That early reveal forces trophy wife Grace and earth mother Frankie to reckon with their respective three-quarter-life crises, bingeing on peyote and forming a messy, snarky friendship. With its preoccupation with older characters undergoing drastic life changes, it isn’t a million miles away from Amazon’s brilliant Transparent, and while it lacks that show’s acuity, Fonda and Tomlin make a massively engaging central pair.
Netflix
TV: Women Who Spit
What does it mean to be a feminist in 2015? Why don’t we talk about mental health? Why are there so few women in comedy? All these issues and more are explored in this selection of iPlayer-exclusive poetry shorts from Deanna Rodger, Vanessa Kisuule, Megan Beech, Cecilia Knapp and Jemima Foxtrot.
Radio: Twenty Years Of Hate
Two decades on from its release, La Haine remains one of the most incendiary films in the history of French cinema, its tale of impoverished and disaffected Parisian youths gaining fresh relevancy in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. In this Radio 4 documentary, Andrew Hussey speaks to the film’s director Mathieu Kassovitz and meets residents of the banlieue where the film was set, in an attempt to assess the film’s legacy.
TV: Super Furry Animals
They’re surely one of the most likable and underrated bands of the last couple of decades, so it’s great to have the Furries back on the road. This S4C doc entertainingly tracks their evolution from shaggy ravers to psych-pop treasures. Iechyd da!
TV: Penny Dreadful
Werewolves, vampires, demons and assorted ghouls – all in a day’s work for Timothy Dalton’s crack team of Victorian monster hunters, with a superb, boggle-eyed Eva Green and oddly yet effectively cast Josh Hartnett front and centre. Penny Dreadful is no Buffy, though: it’s gruesome and graphically carnal, its face remaining totally straight throughout – though with clanging literary namedrops such as Dr Frankenstein and Dorian Gray it has to, otherwise it could easily spill into American Horror Story-levels of preposterousness. Creepy, exciting and lots of fun. Ahead of season two’s premiere, you can catch the entire first series on Sky’s On Demand service.
Sky On Demand
