Drag SOS
With a UK update of RuPaul’s Drag Race on the way, there has never been a better moment to feel fabulous. Channel 4’s new reality series takes things a step further, inviting people struggling with confidence issues to embrace their inner selves with the help of the Family Gorgeous drag collective and their collection of sequinned outfits.
Tuesday 25 June, 10pm, Channel 4
Tonight With Vladimir Putin
From wrestling bears to meddling in elections, is there anything Putin can’t do? This new talkshow sees a CGI version of the Russian premier (played by comic Natt Tapley) chat to guests including Alastair Campbell, June Sarpong and Joe Swash.
Sunday 23 June, 11pm, BBC Two
Beecham House
Has ITV finally filled that Downton-shaped hole in its schedules? On paper, this Delhi-set period drama may just be the series to take on Poldark. Yet its creator Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) has promised that Beecham House will be a “flipping radical thing” in its portrayal of Indian characters and unvarnished truths about empire and colonialism.
Sunday 23 June, 9pm, ITV
Revisionist History
Malcolm Gladwell, truly one of podcasting’s big beasts, is back with a new season of his show about misremembered moments from our past, with stories on Jesuits, mobsters and getting into law school. Meanwhile a spin-off series, Solvable, quizzes some of the world’s most innovative thinkers.
Podcast
The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files
The Windrush scandal shocked Britain when it broke on to the front pages, but historian and documentary-maker David Olusoga reveals in this new film an uncomfortable historical precedent. From Churchill to Thatcher via Macmillan and Wilson, Olusoga takes a closer look at the legal documentation stacked against non-white immigrants since the 1940s, and why the dam burst last summer.
Monday 24 June, 9pm, BBC Two
Warrior
The story goes that Bruce Lee pitched a martial arts TV show in the early 70s, that Lee’s widow alleges was stolen by the studio and turned into Kung Fu starring David Carradine. Lee’s vision finally sees the light of day here, as a Chinese master searches for his sister in a violent 19th-century San Fran.
Tuesday 25 June, 10pm, Sky1
Minding the Gap
Director Bing Liu’s debut made waves at Sundance last year for its touching portrayal of how three young men use skateboarding as an antidote to the cycle of toxic masculinity in the former steel-producing states of North America. Using lo-res footage from his youth combined with interviews of his subjects, Liu’s film is intimate and moving.
Sunday 23 June, BBC Three
Shaft
Does anyone really need a sequel to Shaft, the middling John Singleton-directed, Samuel L Jackson-starring reboot of the 70s Blaxploitation classic? Netflix thinks they do, so here it is, in which Jackson’s punchy PI returns, bafflingly, to battle the evil forces of millennial progressiveness. Likely to be trash, but a freebie for Jackson completists.
From Friday 28 June, Netflix
The Witch
A devout father (Ralph Ineson) rebels against puritan elders and leads his family to set up home beside a forbidding forest in 17th-century New England; the torment that follows in Robert Eggers’s eerie little horror stems from the dysfunctional family’s inner lives, centring on the pubescent daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy), in a tale that springs from the darkest folklore.
Saturday 22 June, 11.05pm, Film4
Glastonbury 2019
Laverne, Lamacq, Whiley, Radcliffe, Cairney et al broadcast from the usual Auntie shanty, ushering armchair festivalgoers through the smörgåsbord of music on offer at the 49th Glastonbury. Highlights will include Stormzy and the Cure’s headline sets, Janet Jackson, and Kylie bopping into the legends slot on the (hopefully balmy) Sunday afternoon.
From Friday 28 June, 7.30pm, BBC Two
