TV

The Hack is television on a mission

Jack Thorne’s study of the phone-hacking scandal is a searing look at criminality, cover-ups and the lives ruined by unethical tabloid journalism

The emotional ‘journey’ to Strictly’s glitterball begins

The stars come out once more on Saturday nights. But the BBC's enduringly popular show has lost some of its lustre for me

Star power can’t save Black Rabbit

Jason Bateman and Jude Law star as a screwed-up Cain and Abel in this sluggish, bloated crime drama. Plus, Coldwater is winningly unhinged and the riotous Juice returns

Task is a tale from the underbelly of small-town America

Mark Ruffalo carries this laboured follow-up to Mare of Easttown. Plus: soapily addictive thriller The Girlfriend and Sky News’s grim immigration debate

The Paper is pitched perfectly between futility and zeal

The US mockumentary series about a local newspaper has echoes of The Office. Plus: Mitchell and Webb, and a new gameshow

King & Conqueror is dreary, overlong and anachronistic

The BBC’s Battle of Hastings drama is more 1970s than 11th century

David Simon on the ‘fear, greed and repetition’ of Hollywood

The man behind The Wire is one of TV’s greatest auteurs – but he despairs of the medium’s future

The tasteless tale of Amanda Knox

A drama about the American student’s wrongful murder conviction and public shaming is outstandingly acted but crass

The existential sci-fi of Alien: Earth

This Ridley Scott prequel delves into complex themes of AI ethics, technocapitalism and the consequences of immortality

The return of Wednesday Addams

As the second series of the hit spin-off airs, I’m reminded the gothic schoolgirl is not a mere character but a way of being

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a stunning achievement

Ciarán Hinds and Jacob Elordi give spectacular performances in this literary-minded slasher-style war drama, adapted from Richard Flanagan’s novel

Unforgivable tests the limits of human sympathy

Jimmy McGovern’s drama about a child abuser returning to his family asks difficult questions

Do we need Bookish, yet another cosy crime?

In our world of constant, instantly accessible horror, TV schedulers are turning ever more to the twee genre

Lena Dunham’s Too Much is unfiltered, lurid – and exhausting

Incessant jokes about sex and Kosovan throuples feel like the work of a teenager clamouring for attention. Plus: Jaws at 50 and Arcadia

Will Sharpe: ‘Writing was a way of making myself feel I belonged’

The actor, writer and director on The White Lotus, his leading role in Lena Dunham’s Too Much, and his own multi-hyphenate career

Gaza: Doctors Under Attack – images that can’t be unseen

A controversial documentary finds a home on Channel 4, The Handmaid’s Tale goes out on a high, and comedy doesn’t get any darker than Such Brave Girls

The Week in TV: Squid Game, The Bear, Smoke

The final series of South Korean smash Squid Game is weighed down with laborious nihilism; an unexpected departure in The Bear; and Taron Egerton stars as an arson investigator in a scorching new thriller

Adam Curtis’s doom-scroll through 20th-century Britain

Plus, Rosie Jones’s crime sitcom and a teen noir that makes Gossip Girl look like Chekhov