The Defiant Ones
From building a bridge between American music’s east and west coasts to inventing a ubiquitous headphone brand, the partnership between Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine has been varied and fruitful. This four-parter documents this odd-couple bromance, hearing from the men themselves and co-conspirators including Eminem, Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg.
Available from Friday 23 March, Netflix
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
How did old-time Hollywood starlet Gloria Grahame come to spend the final years of her life in Liverpool? This poignant film starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell tells the true story of an unlikely late-blooming love affair.
Available from Monday 19 March, Sky Store
The Mechanism
From the creators of Narcos, Netflix’s latest crime epic tells the story of Operation Car Wash, the investigation into the outrageously huge money-laundering scheme that has infected all areas of Brazilian life and rippled outwards into the rest of South America.
Available from Friday 23 March, Netflix
Sport Relief 2018
The BBC’s annual sporty fundraiser touts its peculiar but familiar mixture of heart-rending case studies and wild-eyed variety-show madness. Highlights this year will be a footballers’ Strictly, celebrity boat racing, live music from Kylie Minogue and a smattering of prize fights, including a tear-up between Vanessa White and Hannah Spearritt.
Friday 23 March, 7pm, BBC One
The Art of Now: Band Politics
Chris Hawkins helms this exploration of what appears to be a new spirit of political engagement in rock music. How did subjects such as rail privatisation, the refugee crisis and the NHS become the stuff of indie lyrics? Hawkins speaks to artists including Nadine Shah (pictured) and Joe Talbot from Idles and finds passion and commitment aplenty.
Thursday 22 March, 11.30am, Radio 4
Mercy Street
The sturdy American civil war drama returns for a second season, with more medical emergencies and moral quandaries than you could shake a stovepipe hat at. As we rejoin the hospital staff, a slave-turned-activist arrives in town, causing a rift between Doctor Foster and Nurse Mary.
Sunday 18 March, 7pm, Drama
Jamestown
The second season of the soapy but satisfying 17th-century drama draws to a close with the marshal in a compromising position and Jocelyn risking everything. This run has been all the better for infiltrating issues relating to slavery and the fate of native Americans into the narrative surrounding the escapades of white settlers in America.
Friday 23 March, 9pm, Sky1
The Durrells
A richly deserved third season for a comedy-drama for which the word “rollicking” might have been invented. Keeley Hawes stars as the gloriously un-starchy matriarch of the Durrell clan, negotiating the dramatic love lives of her extended family while basking in the Corfu sun. Pitch-perfect period escapism.
Sunday 18 March, 8pm, ITV
Eyes Without a Face
Psycho, Peeping Tom – 1960 was quite a year for artful horror, and Georges Franju’s lyrical, gory tale is every bit their equal. Pierre Brasseur’s obsessive surgeon reconstructs his daughter’s missing face with features scalpelled from other, murdered, young women. A grotesque, borderline-surreal atmosphere pervades throughout.
Wednesday 21 March, 1.40am, Film4
SEAL Team
If you are keen to see the war on terror dramatised on television but find Homeland slightly too nuanced and sceptical, this might be the show for you. David Boreanaz is decent as Jason Hayes, a soldier dealing very reluctantly with combat trauma but packed off to fight in Liberia in the name of making America great again.
Thursday 22 March, 9pm, Sky1
