What’s on this weekend? From Midsommar to Macbeth
Your guide to what’s worth seeing and reading this weekend
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
Ciara Sheppard in Tyla
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“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
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