Banshee
While it may pride itself on its operatic levels of bloodshed (a throat being ripped out by a car hood ornament, anyone?), this pulpy action drama (pictured, right) about a lawless Pennsylvanian town is made up of more than violence alone, confronting the notion of moral codes and how firmly we should enforce them. Season three continues Thursdays, Sky Atlantic, while the series in full is available on Sky On Demand and Now TV.
This Is Me
A companion piece to Amazon’s comedy Transparent, which returns later this year, this short-form documentary series looks at contemporary issues around the transgender community, from dealing with bigotry to bathroom etiquette. Exec-produced by Transparent’s creator Jill Solloway, This Is Me proves as warm and illuminating as her other show, and, like Transparent, picked up an Emmy nomination earlier this month.
Britain On Film
In a project remarkable for its sheer scale, the BFI has made available more than 2,500 films depicting Britain from Victorian times to the present day available on its website. The footage, which ranges from amateur video to newsreel footage, has been archived by location and can be searched for using an interactive map. It’s the sort of thing you can lose hours to: our search dug up footage of an early morning swimming club in 1929 Plymouth and a documentary on the home life of Leeds manager Don Revie in 1974.
Dead Authors Podcast
Anyone with even a cursory interest in comedy podcasts will have come across Paul F Tompkins (pictured, inset), a US comic who has popped up on everything from WTF to his own improvised effort SPONTANEANATION. He is also responsible for Dead Authors, which began as a live show in LA, and has been recorded since 2011. In it, Tompkins plays HG Wells, travelling through time to interview other literary figures, including Tennessee Williams (played by Kristen Schaal) and L Ron Hubbard (Review’s Andy Daly). It has that wonderful digressive quality that the best comedy pods possess and is not afraid to slip into surreal territory.
The Outcast
This BBC two-parter is that rare thing: a book adaptation that doesn’t betray its source material. That was probably because author Sadie Jones was allowed to refashion her own work for TV, capturing the intensity and sadness of her 1950s-set novel, about a boy who witnesses his mother’s sudden death and struggles with anger and alcoholism thereafter. Stark, sombre and uncommonly gripping.
