Television
Devs
Alex Garland has made his name with high-concept sci-fi headscratchers such as Annihilation and Ex Machina, and this outing on television is no different. Filmed in his striking, neon-lit style, the story concerns the shady operations of a futuristic tech firm, Amaya, and its prophet-like founder Forest, played with quiet intensity by Nick Offerman.
Wednesday 15 April, 9pm, BBC Two
Grayson’s Art Club
Potter and artistic provocateur Grayson Perry takes charge of our lockdown boredom in this new weekly series where he invites viewers at home to create artworks alongside his efforts in his home studio, all for the chance to be exhibited.
Thursday 16 April, 8pm, Channel 4
Rebuilding Notre Dame: Inside the Great Cathedral Rescue
A year after the devastating fire that tore through the Paris landmark, this one-hour special showcases the architects, scientists and craftspeople who are carefully returning the structure back to its former glory.
Wednesday 17 April, 9pm, BBC Four
Prue Leith: Journey With My Daughter
The Bake Off judge travels to Cambodia with adopted daughter Li-Da to track down her child’s biological family. Like many of her generation, Li-Da escaped Pol Pot’s genocide, and, via social media and DNA testing, now attempts to trace her roots.
Tuesday 14 April, 9pm, Channel 4
Quiz
Michael Sheen dons a blond wig and plenty of fake tan as he takes on the role of Chris Tarrant in this much-anticipated dramatisation of Charles Ingram’s fraudulent 2001 win on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Expect plenty of that infamous “cough”, with Matthew Macfadyen as Ingram and Fleabag’s Sian Clifford playing his wife Diana.
Monday 13 to Wednesday 15 April, 9pm, ITV
Loveless
Another painful parable of modern Russia from Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev: Boris and Zhenya share a flat, although their marriage has collapsed. After an especially bitter row their anguished young son Alyosha disappears: a heartbreaking event that only feeds their rage in a mournful tale of family and social dysfunction.
Sunday 12 April, 12.55am, Channel 4
Run
Would you up sticks and suddenly leave your middling existence if your ex of 17 years asked you to? Such is the chaotic premise of this new comedy, produced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and written by Vicky Jones. Domnhall Gleeson and Merritt Wever star as the estranged couple, reunited after each texts the other to “run”. Where to, though?
Wednesday 15 April, 9pm, Sky Comedy
Killing Eve
The award-guzzling cat-and-mouse spy thriller returns, picking over the debris of season two’s gun-assisted cliffhanger. TV’s best duo who aren’t Ant and Dec, AKA Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh, return, with the former continuing to chew the screen with all the relish of a psychopathic assassin with a seemingly never-ending arsenal of accents.
From Monday 13 April, iPlayer
School of Hard Tricks
Three professional magicians take six disenfranchised young people from Bradford on a magical mystery tour, teaching them sleight of hand, misdirection – and, they hope, confidence-boosting life skills.
From Tuesday 14 April, BBC Three
The Innocence Files
A real boon for true-crime fiends in the shape of this nine-part doc exploring wrongful convictions in the US. Made in collaboration with The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organisation, the Netflix show focuses on eight separate cases, including that of death row convict Alfred Dewayne Brown who was released in 2015 after crucial evidence was found to have been withheld.
From Wednesday 15 April, Netflix
Fauda
The Israeli espionage series returns for a third season. Co-creator and star Lior Raz plays top Israeli agent Doron Kavillio, who finds himself deep undercover in a sports club owned by a low-level Hamas member. Needless to say, things go very wrong.
From Thursday 16 April, Netflix
Home
Bored of being in your own home staring at the same walls, or, if you’ve ventured back to bed again, that same ever-spreading damp patch on the ceiling? Well, luxuriate in the pure escapism of this new nine-episode documentary taking you inside some of the world’s most innovative homes, from what looks like a massive greenhouse in Sweden to a tree-top experiment in Bali.
From Friday 17 April, Apple TV+
#blackAF
Black-ish creator Kenya Barris gamely takes aim at wealthy, Hollywood-focused blackness in this wry family sitcom starring Rashida Jones as the matriarch to his lightly fictionalised father figure. It’s a prescient look at new money, luxury, and its conflicting consequences on what exactly constitutes black identity.
From Friday 17 April, Netflix
Podcast
Inside the Groove
Madonna stan Edward Russell’s geeky new podcast dissects the stories behind some of the superstar’s biggest hits, starting with Vogue. Did you know that producer Shep Pettibone based the 1990 classic on an earlier remix he’d done for Janet Jackson? At just 23 minutes, it leaves you plenty of time to whack on her hits once it’s done.
Staying in With Emily and Kumail
Comedy’s first couple, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, have joined the lockdown podcast boom, and theirs is already one of the better efforts. They divulge amusingly banal details from their home life – Gordon has been tightening doorknobs – as well as viewing tips.
Films
Tigertail (No cert)
(Alan Yang) 91 mins
Comedy writer and producer Alan Yang (Parks and Recreation, Master of None) makes his feature-directing debut for Netflix. He draws on his background to tell the story of a Taiwanese immigrant to the US who has to enter into an arranged marriage in order to stay. Yang says it’s “a love letter to my family and all of the Asian immigrants out there”.
Netflix
The Iron Mask (12)
(Oleg Stepchenko) 115 mins
Arnie and Jackie, together again! Schwarzenegger and Chan face off on screen for only the second time in this sequel to fantasy thriller Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jason Flemyng as an 18th-century mapmaker. Here, he heads eastwards for more supernatural shenanigans.
Various digital platforms
Trolls World Tour (U)
(Walt Dohrn, David P Smith) 91 mins
Hollywood will be watching carefully. This Trolls sequel is the first putative blockbuster to be released after the shutdown but, presumably, it has less to lose by going straight to digital. Fortunately, Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake are back to keep things foot-tapping.
Sky Store
Love Wedding Repeat (No cert)
(Dean Craig) 100 mins
The Sliding Doors of marital-coms – at least that’s what Netflix is hoping for. Olivia Munn is the sultry American who reconnects with hunky Sam Claflin at his sister’s wedding in a reworking of French comedy Plan de Table. Will love triumph?
Netflix
Beyond the Door (15)
(O Hellman, R Barrett) 108 mins
A 1974 foray into Exorcist-influenced satanic horror. In the days when cruddy horror was no longer a last resort (but pretty close), Juliet Mills is a possessed pregnant woman, headspinning and vomiting in the classic style.
Amazon Prime Video
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