What’s on this weekend? From Just Mercy to Deadwater Fell

The Week’s best film, TV, book and live show on this weekend, with excerpts from the top reviews.

TELEVISION: Deadwater Fell

“Deadwater Fell (Channel 4) is basically Broadchurch in Scotland. David Tennant is a doctor rather than a policeman, and at the centre of a crime rather than investigating it, and he’s letting his freckles show, but switch your mind to its Broadchurch setting and you will not be disappointed…it feels far more solidly engineered, easily as convincing in its portrait of a small community suddenly shattered by an awful event, and it elicits more emotional investment from the off. I’m finding it an irresistible treat, but these things are essentially alchemical and unpredictable. Broadchurch with freckles – think of it like that if it’ll help. Come on in; the Deadwater’s lovely.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Episode 2 airs on Channel 4, 9pm on Friday 17 November. Episode 1 on 4oD

MOVIE: Just Mercy

Terri White for Empire

“It’s said that the worst thing you can give someone on death row is hope. It’s a theory that drives urgent legal drama Just Mercy, the real-life story of crusading civil rights defence attorney Bryan Stevenson (Jordan) that confronts the systemic racism at the heart of the American penal system…The brutality and horror of death row is iterated powerfully here; from the minor humiliations that keep the men bowed to the smell of the burnt flesh of other prisoners.”

Released 17 January

BOOK: Impossible First by Colin Brady

Kirkus Reviews

“It had never been done before: to make a crossing of Antarctica alone, unsupported and unassisted, via the South Pole, a 930-mile trek in temperatures substantially below zero and wind chills doubling the cold…Many of his tales have an underlying theme of audacity accomplished through ‘grit, purpose, and a growth mindset.’ He also has a charming partner in his wife, Jenna, and it is a pleasure to see them working together to get through the rough spots, whether winning over a new sponsor or talking the author through especially difficult moments…This inner saga works hand in hand with the physical challenges to make for a full tapestry of remarkable experience. A brutally sublime tale of derring-do that transports as well as teaches.”

Published 14 January

STAGE: ROOMAN

Lyndsey Winship for The Guardian

“The London international mime festival (43 years old and stronger than ever) specialises in indefinable performance, and this show by Australian multimedia artist Fleur Elise Noble is certainly in a genre of its own. Projection, puppetry, animation, song, dance and soundscape feed into an unsettling hour of film-as-performance, with scenes projected across multiple paper screens and moving parts (a rolling screen for a bus that rides across the stage, for example)…Its dreamlike detachment makes it difficult to love, but this highly original show is strikingly distinctive.”

Until 18 January at The Pit, London