Video: Off The Page
If truth really is stranger than fiction, it’s slightly surprising that this synthesis of reportage and drama has never been attempted before. Here, Guardian reporters have collaborated with luminaries of stage and screen (including Rafe Spall, Tobias Menzies and Katherine Parkinson) to create a series of short standalone playlets. Hot-button issues such as English identity and online surveillance are explored, while Britain Isn’t Eating has some pointed fun with the notion of a country addicted to food porn yet subsisting on food banks.
Podcast: Serial
This spin-off of the This American Life podcast has won broad acclaim, and rightly so: a journalistic reinvestigation of a 1999 Baltimore murder case which, despite being real life, is as gripping in its twists and turns as any box set. Your conventional murder-mystery winds up with a motive and a killer caught red-handed. But nothing in Serial is clear cut; host Sarah Koenig touches on racial stereotyping, shifting testimony and leads left unexplored. Returning after a Thanksgiving break, will Episode 10 bring resolution?
serialpodcast.org, iTunes
TV: Music Nation
It’s a mystery that this excellent series – think Sonic Highways transposed to Blighty and shorn of Dave Grohl’s frat-rock bluster – has been tucked away in C4’s graveyard slot. But these documentaries on Britain’s divergent local music scenes pack a real punch. Northern bassline, Asian rave, grime and 80s Glaswegian lo-fi are all well documented. With plenty more scenes to be explored, this could easily be expanded into a more high-profile series.
TV: The Day Of The Triffids
Carnivorous mobile plants? Cornea-frazzling meteorites? With a disease thrown in for good measure? The Day Of The Triffids is both scary and preposterous. So it’s hardly surprising that John Wyndham’s novel has proved irresistible as both adaptation fodder and post-apocalyptic drama template. This BBC version from 1981 is one of the best versions. There’s little hysteria here and the stolid evocation of British stiff-upper-lip under extreme duress actually makes the shocks hit even harder.
TV: Constantine
Developed by Dark Knight screenwriter David Goyer and Dexter producer Daniel Cerone, this new superhero series explores the bleak netherworld of John Constantine (Matt Ryan), a deadpan sorcerer whose humanist tendencies are balanced by a world-weary cynicism.
Amazon Prime
