Pick of the Week
Dear England
Sunday, BBC One, 9pm
Joseph Fiennes stars as former England manager Gareth Southgate in this four-part football drama based on the award-winning play by James Graham. In 2016, former England international Southgate took over as temporary manager of the England men’s football team, and set out to transform them into a winning side once again. At this stage, the side had endured 50 years of hurt, but Southgate was determined to break the hoodoo that kept England from winning trophies, and turn a poisoned chalice into a major trophy. Southgate led the team to the World Cup semi-finals in 2018, and to the finals of Euro 2024, and though he didn’t quite get them over the line, he turned England back into a force to be reckoned with. The series takes us inside the England squad’s dressing room as Southgate works hard to start a new chapter in the annals of England football, with help from sports psychologist Pippa Grange (Jodie Whittaker). The cast also includes Adam Hugill as Harry Maguire, Will Antenbring as Harry Kane, Bobby Schofield as Wayne Rooney, Abdul Sessay as Bukayo Saka, Edem-Ita Duke as Marcus Rashford, Francis Lovehall as Raheem Sterling, Josh Barrow as Jordan Pickford and Sam Baker Jones as Jack Grealish. I’m definitely on for this fixture.
Highlights
Who Do You Think You Are?
Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm
In the RTÉ series Come to Your Census, Irish celebrities trace their family roots with help from historians, using the newly released 1926 census as a jumping-off point. Now the BBC’s long-running genealogy series returns, and first up is presenter Zoe Ball, who traces her own family history with help from her dad, the former TV personality Johnny Ball. She discovers her roots reach as far north as Glasgow and as far south as Cornwall, and finds ancestors who lived in tenements and worked in mines, and displayed a resilience that kept going through poverty and deprivation. She also learns about the mental health issues suffered by her maternal grandmother, and documented in medical records.
Bloom 2026
Thursday, RTÉ One, 7.30pm
Can you believe it’s been 20 years since Bloom’s first flowering in the Phoenix Park? The annual horticulture festival celebrates its 20th birthday this year, and by now it has become bedded in the Irish public psyche and is a well-established perennial on the summer calendar. To celebrate 20 years a-blooming, presenters Marty Morrissey and Áine Lawlor will work their usual magic, as they check out what’s happening at this year’s festival, explore the superb show gardens created by top garden designers, sample the tasty food from Ireland’s finest artisan producers, and forage for tips and advice on growing and caring for a variety of plants.
Gardens are meant to be places of peace and tranquillity, and so this year’s Bloom has added a new wellness dimension to the festival, with a dedicated area for nurturing mind and body health, where visitors can take part in relaxing, stress-busting activities including Yoga in the Park.
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Meanwhile, presenter Brendan Courtney will meet the garden designers who have been toiling all spring to create beautiful gardens for Bloom, including the winning design from the grand finale of Super Garden, which will be aired just before Bloom 2026.
Putin: In Ten Pictures
Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm
When former KGB agent Vladimir Putin took over the Russian presidency from Boris Yeltsin, the world saw a man of action who would lead Russia into the new century with a firm but benevolent hand. But as Putin’s power bedded in, he adopted a more hardline, nationalistic stance, and used the power of the media to project a carefully curated image of himself to his own people and the world at large. This documentary film charts Putin’s ever-tightening grip on Russian politics and his descent into autocracy and tyranny, using 10 key photographs that have defined his presidency and power. The film also features contributions from former White House adviser Fiona Hill, Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, and Nadya Tolokonnikova, the co-founder of Pussy Riot, who fell foul of Putin’s repressive regime.
Make That Movie
Thursday, Channel 4, 10pm
Sam is a young would-be film auteur with an unconventional approach to making movies. He and his motley production crew – runner Jess, intimacy co-ordinator Sebastian and his AI girlfriend Super Breast, sound engineer Pat and cinematographer Winnie – are not going to Hollywood, but going around the country helping ordinary people get their cinematic vision up on the screen in just three days. This wacky sitcom is created and written by Sam Campbell, who stars as the director. In this two-episode opener, Sam and the crew set up their gear in a care home, where the elderly residents have a great idea for a movie: an octogenarian version of Tron, in which a crack team of retirees take on the online scammers by going inside the computer and doing battle with their pixelated foes.
Streaming
Spider-Noir
From Wednesday, May 27th, Prime Video
What do you get when you mix a hard-boiled detective with an ass-kicking arachnoid superhero? Nicolas Cage stars as Ben Reilly, a down-at-heel private eye in the black-and-white world of the 1930s. But something strange happens, and he finds himself conferred with spider-like powers of speed, agility, strength and web-spinning. Spider-Man meets Sam Spade in this live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir.
Star City
From Friday, May 29th, Apple TV+
What if the Russians had beaten the Americans to the moon, and it was a cosmonaut’s boot stepping on the lunar surface, making one giant leap for the Marxist-Leninist way of life? This alternative-history series, a cousin of Apple’s acclaimed space-race series For All Mankind, tells the story of the moon landings from a Soviet perspective, as Russian scientists, engineers and intelligence officers work around the clock to put a man on the moon before Nasa can get there. But the space programme is hampered by the KGB, which sees everyone involved as potential spies, and an impatient Kremlin, which demands that the moon shot be brought forward no matter the danger to human lives. Rhys Ifans and Anna Maxwell Martin head the cast in a rocket-propelled thriller that deftly rewrites the past.
