The Gilded Age
Sky Atlantic, 2am & 9pm
After the disappointments of The English Game and Belgravia, Julian Fellowes’s latest lavish period series represents something like a return to form while never straying too far from his enduring preoccupations. The time and place is late 19th-century New York, as the advance of the railroads brings new money flooding into a city and society that are unsure how to handle it. The entrepreneurs are embodied by devious railroad tycoon George Russell (Morgan Spector) and his ambitious but insecure wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon); their antagonists are two curtain-twitching sisters, Christine Baranski’s waspish, wealthy snob and Cynthia Nixon’s kindly but dull spinster.
Our wide-eyed guide to the world is the latter pair’s niece, Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson, daughter of Meryl Streep), arriving from backwoods Pennsylvania after her father’s death and finding herself caught between the security of the old and promise of the new. It is no surprise to find several suitors already hoving into view – one via a puppy in peril called Pumpkin, no less. The focus on women is welcome and, if some of the cast struggle a little with Fellowes’s tendency towards exposition, they’re never less than watchable. GT
Shane
Amazon Prime Video
While we scarcely need further reminders of Australian domination of the Ashes, Shane Warne, one of the most gifted and controversial cricketers of the 1990s and 2000s, here receives a feature-length profile that addresses both triumphs and disasters with a pleasing absence of spin, from 1993’s Ball of the Century and series whitewashes to associated drugs, gambling and sex scandals.
Snowpiercer
Netflix
Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) joins the third series of the stylised dystopian thriller as a mysterious figure who comes to the aid of Layton (Daveed Diggs) and may have found a way to survive off the eponymous train. Mr Wilford (Sean Bean), meanwhile, tightens his grip on those remaining on board.
The Decade the Rich Won
BBC Two, 9pm
Amid exploding property prices, rising poverty rates and fortunes made in highly contentious fashion during the pandemic, this documentary talks to plenty of the key figures, from Alistair Darling and George Osborne to Jeremy Corbyn and Philip Hammond, to understand how and why, in the words of Leonard Cohen, the poor stay poor and the rich get rich.
Secrets of the Krays
ITV, 9pm; not STV
First shown on BritBox in May, this solid three-part documentary series begins with the rise of the gangster twins in the early 1960s, shown in reconstructions, first-hand accounts and archive footage. The Krays are a story that always enthrals, but it’s light on revelations, and a little dated in terms of style and approach.
Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild
Channel 5, 9pm
Ben Fogle heads to Cornwall to stay with two Londoners who have spent the past five years turning a seven-acre plot into a farm with chickens, pigs, ducks and arable land, while also raising children. Their reasons for the move are complex and unexpected, from concerns over racism to mental-health struggles. As usual with this understatedly compelling series, it’s another revealing slice of life.
Reopening Night
Sky Documentaries, 9pm
Positive Covid tests and dreadful weather are the least of the obstacles faced by Public Theater’s all-black, open-air production of The Merry Wives of Windsor in New York. Rudy Valdez’s HBO documentary is as much an interrogation of the value of art in tumultuous times as it is the logistics of outdoor theatre.
Five Easy Pieces (1970) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Greats, 6.15pm
Pianist Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) has rejected his cultured, upper-class background for a simpler life working in an oil field in California, where he falls in love with local waitress Rayette (Karen Black). But when his father falls gravely ill, the pair take a trip to Washington state to reunite with his estranged family. Confronted with his past, Robert must work out what kind of life he truly wants. It’s really about the mess of America, and it’s masterful.
Suffragette (2015) ★★★★
Film4, 6.50pm
Sarah Gavron’s fiery, cage-rattling drama about the early 20th-century political battle for British women’s suffrage is far from genteel. Carey Mulligan is on scintillating form, showing how Maud Watts was transformed from bystander to activist with riveting precision. As Abi Morgan’s script strips away the reasons for her to fall back into line, her nerve soars through the roof. Meryl Streep and Helena Bonham Carter co-star.
Jack Reacher (2012) ★★★
ITV4, 9pm
The hero of Lee Child’s thrillers, a hulking ex-military cop you wouldn’t want to antagonise in a bar, has been deemed a suitable fit for Tom Cruise. Christopher McQuarrie’s film plays more like a parody of 1980s macho swagger, but at least Werner Herzog has fun as the baddie. Rosamund Pike is the attorney who hires Reacher to clear her client of mass murder. A new TV show, Reacher, premieres on Amazon on 4 February.
