Nigel Betts

Mike Bartlett's play Albion, directed for the stage by Rupert Goold, is a tragicomic drama about national identity, family, passion and the disappointment of personal dreams. Filmed at London’s Almeida Theatre, the play is set in the garden of an English country house. The house has been bought by successful businesswoman Audrey Walters, who intends to restore the ruined garden to its former glory and create a memorial to the son she recently lost in a foreign war.

A young man, Stevie, awakes on a wasteland overlooking Bradford, still bleeding from a brutal attack that has left him with severe memory loss. Recent events are a total blank; his more distant memories are a blur. He slowly begins to piece together his identity: his name, his home, his family. At first it appears he returns to his former self but through a series of painful flashbacks and encounters, he comes to learn of the dark and disturbing events that led to his beating. Ashamed to learn of the person he has become – and the dangerous world he became mixed up in – Stevie realises he will have to pay. But at what price?

7.1/10

Based on a true story, this four-part drama tells the story of the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Croxteth, Liverpool, in 2007. It explores Melanie’s and Steve’s ordeal, and tells of how Rhys’ murderer and associates were eventually brought to justice.

7.9/10

Coal Hill School has been a feature of Doctor Who since the first episode, but now we get to see the day-to-day adventures of the students coping with intrusions from space and time.

6.9/10
8.4%

A romantic comedy about the unexpected relationship between Judy and Leo, a 40-something transgender woman and a down on his luck, 26-year-old man. Differences mean nothing if love means everything.

7.1/10

The Midlands, 1984. Two young lads are about to learn what it is to be a miner, to be accepted into the close camaraderie and initiated into a unique workplace where sweat, toil, collapsing roofs and explosions are all to be met with bawdy humour. London, 1984. A conflicted Tory MP, a brash American CEO and an eccentric maverick are the face of a radical Conservative government preparing to do battle with the most powerful workforce, the miners. As the two sides clash, the miners fight for their livelihoods and families, and the government for its vision of a free Britain. Together they change the fabric of the nation forever.

The series is the first to star Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor, an alien Time Lord who travels through time and space in his TARDIS, which appears to be a British police box on the outside. It also stars Jenna Coleman as his companion, Clara Oswald. Also playing a major recurring role in the series is Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink, Clara's boyfriend. The main story arc revolves around a mysterious woman called Missy (portrayed by Michelle Gomez), who is often seen welcoming people who have died throughout the series to the "Promised Land", a place that serves as an apparent afterlife to deceased characters. Missy's true identity is later revealed to be the Doctor's arch-enemy, the Master, who has hatched a plan using the help of the Cybermen and through manipulation of the Doctor and Clara's relationship.

Deep in the heart of the English countryside lies the enchanting village of Gladbury. Legend has it every 25 years an angel visits the village candlemaker and touches a single candle. Whoever lights this candle receives a miracle on Christmas Eve. But in 1890, at the dawn of the electric age, this centuries old legend may come to an end.

6.2/10
2.1%

Lara is Palestinian and lives in London. She has everything she wants in her life: a husband, a son and a beautiful house in one of the best areas of the city. Nevertheless, her everyday life appears cold and grey, only brightened up by surreptitious sips of vodka. But one day, Inam, a sensual, resolute girl, knocks on her door. Lara seems to be transported back to her adolescence when she and Inam were close friends, and studied together in Ramallah. In Lara's astonished eyes we see a mixture of fear and desire towards the woman whom she had lost sight of. A deceptive tangle of memories which a trauma, a love affair and an experience with two Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem an re-surface. From a gripping, well structured emotional thriller that traces back their memories through recurrent flashbacks that take us to the West Bank in 1994, during the Intifada.

6.2/10

The autobiography of a Somalian nomad who was sold in marriage at 13, fled from Africa a while later to become finally an American supermodel and is now at the age of 38, the UN spokeswoman against female genital mutilation.

7.4/10
5%

Based on a true story, MRS RATCLIFFE'S REVOLUTION, is the tale of a family from Bingley in Yorkshire, who defect to East Germany. Here they find a nightmare of rationing, censorship and the most spied upon people in history rather than the Marxist utopia they were expecting. But if they thought getting in was difficult wait until they try to get out.

5.8/10
8.3%

The Eustace Bros. was a BBC drama series starring Charles Dale, Neil Morrissey and Ralf Little as three brothers from Nottingham struggling to keep their discount warehouse business afloat. The show first aired under the name of Paradise Heights in 2002, with the second and final series being shown in 2003 with the new name.

6.9/10

Cheery kids-TV characters of Pib and Pog lose their cool with one another, sparking a manic cartoon showdown between the two.

7.3/10

A bored little prince makes a poor rat hunter his whipping boy but after his pranks at the royal court almost causes a war with the neighbor king he runs away with the whipping boy to escape from his first spanking. After being in the real world his life will change making him a prince fit to rule.

6.5/10

Intertwined story of the lives of two women; an Englishwoman suffering abuse from her violent husband, and a Russian poet serving hard labour because of her subversive work.

7.8/10

Henry Jekyll is a troubled man. His wife died of pneumonia. He wants his sister-in-law, but her father forbids any contact. And his experiments into the dual nature of man have yielded a personality-splitting drug that he has tested on himself, changing him into an uninhibited brute who seeks violent and undignified pleasures. Jekyll quickly becomes addicted to the sordid freedom induced by the drug. He can commit the most enjoyably revolting deeds, then return to his laboratory and use an antidote to change back to his original form, so that his lofty persona remains untarnished.

6.2/10