Here’s a face a lot of us have not seen for a while. Time was when Katya Adler, the BBC’s Europe editor, was never off our screens.
Now, bar a stint on Radio 4’s Today this week, she is most likely to be seen or heard on the World Service or BBC News channel. It’s a measure of how the focus of international news has shifted, away from the EU and Brexit and towards Russia and Ukraine.
The two-part documentary Living Next Door to Putin (BBC1, Tuesday, 8pm) brings Adler back to primetime BBC1. The plan is to go from Poland to Norway, taking the temperature of the “neighbourhood” as she goes.
The over-riding mood is one of nervousness, understandable after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. For the West, says Adler, the days of the USSR seem like a long time ago. Yet in the countries that suffered under Soviet occupation, memories remain strong. The idea that what happened to Ukraine could happen to them next is only too credible.
Russia’s neighbours have reacted in various ways to the threat. Poland, for example, has erected a barrier in the north to stop migrants being shepherded through by Russia’s ally Belarus. When Adler goes to see this fence it is only a matter of minutes before armed and masked guards turn up to ask what she is doing there. This happens several times.
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There is something sinister about the wide open spaces Adler drives past on her way up to Norway. What would once have been regarded as just wilderness now look like potential strategic weaknesses.
An alarming but timely look at how quickly the situation in Europe is changing. Here’s to more such films, and more Adler, on the main channels.
Did you catch the recent run of the brilliant, Benedict Cumberbatch-starring Patrick Melrose on Sky Arts? What was once on a pay to view channel was now free to view. I was hoping Sky would repeat the exercise, and I’m delighted to say Mildred Pierce (Sky Arts, Thursday, 9pm), first shown on Sky Atlantic, has also made it to the land of free viewing. Kate Winslet stars in the titular role as a single mother trying to stay afloat in Depression-era America. Catch it if you can.
Just when you thought it was hard to love the channel more, along comes Classic Movies: the Story of Brighton Rock (Sky Arts, Thursday, 8pm). This is the latest instalment in a series that has already cast an expert eye over The Third Man and The Ladykillers. This week the Boulting brothers’ 1948 classic gets the up close and personal treatment.
Starring a devilishly young and utterly terrifying Richard Attenborough as pint-sized gangster Pinkie Brown, with a screenplay by Graham Greene from his novel, and Terence Rattigan, Brighton Rock is hailed as ahead of its time.
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The first film critic interviewed is Derek Malcolm. The Guardian and Evening Standard writer, who sadly died in July, says Brighton Rock showed that British cinema could do noir as well as the Americans.
Not everyone was impressed with the film’s willingness to show another side to Blighty. The film’s depiction of Britain as a seedy and violent place caused uproar, with the Daily Mirror urging its readers to boycott the film. It was said that Brighton Council only gave the green light to the production on condition the film ran a caption stressing that the tale was set in the past and the town was not at all like that now.
What is it with morning TV people and drama? First it was Piers Morgan walking off the set of Good Morning Britain after a row with the weather guy over the Duchess of Sussex. Then it kicked off on This Morning. A head rolled, apologies were made and the mayhem is not over yet.
Fascinating as it has been to see those drama unfold, reality is still no match for the high-octane goings on in The Morning Show (Apple TV+ from Wednesday).
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One of the streaming channel’s biggest hits, The Morning Show stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon as the primo presenters of a daily news show based in New York. All they want to do is report the news, if only their (mostly male) bosses and other scheming sorts (again, mostly male), would get out of the way. In the third series it’s fasten your seatbelts time again as more change sweeps the station. The trailer shows UBA being hit by a cyber attack that threatens to spill the secrets of the channel and the people who run it. Plus there’s the usual budget worries, office politics, and pressure to stay ahead of the game.
Bill Crudup is back as office Machiavelli Cory Ellison, and new to the cast is Jon Hamm, ole Don Draper himself, as the latest media mogul in town who thinks he has all the answers.
Let the drama, and the tantrums, and the backstabbing, commence.
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