The Week’s best film, TV, book and live show on this weekend, with excerpts from the top reviews.
TELEVISION: Stacey Dooley: Costa del Narcos
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
“A new documentary, following Stacey Dooley as she investigates the Spanish drug trade, is set to be a gripping watch. Costa Del Narcos will see the journalist attempt to explore how southern Spain became the main gateway for drugs into Europe, with the region becoming one of the most popular routes for smuggling cocaine and hashish into the continent. She will explore the incredible lengths smugglers go to get their product into the country, including travelling in speedboats at up to 100mph in extreme weather conditions and crossing seas in the middle of the night. She'll even go on a patrol with the Spanish police's air force team to scan the strip of water between Morocco and Spain - a hot entry point for smuggling.”
BBC Two, Sunday at 9pm
MOVIE: Midsommar
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian
“Midsommar is an outrageous black-comic carnival of agony, starring charismatic Florence Pugh in a comely robe and floral headdress. It features funny-tasting pies and chorally assisted ritual sex, with pagan celebrants gazing into the middle distance and warbling as solemnly as the young dudes in the Coca-Cola TV ad about teaching the world to sing. It’s all set in an eerily beautiful sunlit plain, bounded by forests and lakes… It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, a crescendo of paranoid trippiness building to an uproarious grossout in its final moments - of which the poster image, incidentally, gives you no clue.”
New to Amazon Prime this week
BOOK: I’m Your Huckleberry by Val Kilmer
Danette Chavez on AV Club
“After revealing his latest crush, Kilmer shares a gnarly encounter from his convalescence at the home of none other than Cher, his former flame and lifelong friend, in the first chapter. As he recalls his own blood-soaked grin and laughter spurred by Cher’s fawning over an EMT, Kilmer shows great vulnerability and a knack for storytelling… Occasionally, Kilmer does show the same puckishness and bravado that made him stand out at “THE Juilliard School” (emphasis Kilmer’s), weaving in some truly impressive humble brags about his commitment to realistic portrayals of a gunslinger, fighter pilot, and the Lizard King himself.”
Published 21 April
STAGE: Macbeth (RSC)
Stephen Dalton in The Hollywood Reporter
“Eccleston suggested in a recent interview that Macbeth is rooted in male insecurity about masculinity. That element is certainly present in his kinetic, gruff, brawny performance. Sporting a military buzzcut and jutting beard, he plays Macbeth as a man of action, a barely domesticated warrior plainly more comfortable in body armor than the ceremonial robes of power. With his pumped-up torso, Eccleston exudes more brute physicality than usual here, like a retired boxing champ eager to prove he can still crush any young challenger.”
Macbeth is one of six recent RSC productions on BBC iPlayer from 23 April
-
Schools: The return of a dreaded fitness testFeature Donald Trump is bringing the Presidential Fitness Test back to classrooms nationwide
-
An insatiable hunger for proteinFeature Americans can't get enough of the macronutrient. But how much do we really need?
-
Health: Will medical science survive RFK Jr.?Feature Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scrapped $500 million in mRNA vaccine research contracts
-
Unforgivable: harrowing drama about abuse and rehabilitationThe Week Recommends 'Catastrophic impact' of abuse is explored in 'thought-provoking' series
-
Friendship: 'bromance' comedy starring Paul Rudd and Tim RobinsonThe Week Recommends 'Lampooning and embracing' middle-aged male loneliness, this film is 'enjoyable and funny'
-
How to go on your own Race Across the WorldThe Week Recommends The BBC hit show is inspiring fans to choose low-budget adventures
-
The top period dramas to stream nowThe Week Recommends Heaving bosoms and billowing shirts are standard fare in these historical TV classics
-
David Attenborough at 99: a 'radical' voice for climate actionIn The Spotlight In his new film 'Ocean', TV's best-known naturalist delivers his strongest message yet
-
Stephen Graham's best TV and film rolesThe Week Recommends From Line of Duty to Adolescence, these are the prolific actor's must-watch projects
-
Why are we so obsessed with The Traitors?In the Spotlight It's the BBC's most scheming, manipulative and treacherous show – and viewers can't get enough
-
Gregg Wallace: a man out of time?Talking Point MasterChef presenter's downfall shines spotlight on how mistreatment of junior staff has all too often been ignored
