Radio Times

THERE USED TO be an unwritten law of British television that said when times are tough viewers head to David Attenborough documentaries to escape the grim realities of everyday life. But with the rising awareness of the climate crisis, even the natural world isn’t the safe haven it used to be. Time, then, to explore that other traditional bolthole when the real world becomes worrying: the period drama. This Friday, ITV1 provides your passport to another age when it opens the doors to Hotel Portofino. Set on the Italian Riviera during the roaring 20s, Natascha McElhone plays Bella, the English owner of a new hotel, keen to cater to her upper-class guests’ every whim as they indulge themselves on a picturesque stretch of Mediterranean coastline. Everyone is of course beautiful and well…

TV 1 Great British Menu Tuesday–Thursday 8.00pm BBC2 Andi Oliver introduces more talented chefs from around the country as they compete to have their dishes served at a banquet celebrating British illustration, animation and gaming. TV 2 Happy Valley Sunday 9.00pm BBC1 The end of the final series is drawing near, and in this penultimate episode we discover how an already stressed-out Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) reacts to the news that Tommy is on the run. Are those she loves now in danger? STREAMING 3 Shrinking Available from 27 January Apple TV+ What if therapists were just brutally honest? Harrison Ford runs a practice where that happens, in a wry new dramedy set in sunny California. TV 4 Silent Witness Monday/Tuesday 9.00pm BBC1 A community of coppers is embroiled in a murder — but is it a case of one bad apple or are they all rotten?…

The shadow of Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghetti western Django (starring Franco Nero) hangs heavy over Sky Atlantic’s new series of the same name. “I feel a huge pressure, but us Italians pulled off Django once!” says artistic director Francesca Comencini. But while it looks like a classic western at first glance, there’s a significant difference in this updated version — women are centre stage. “More than any other genre in cinema, the western has established the code of patriarchy and virility,” says Comencini, who also directed the first four episodes of the ten-part series, which stars The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Noomi Rapace, and Matthias Schoenaerts (The Danish Girl) as the taciturn eponymous gunfighter. Django’s key villain, Elizabeth Thurman (Rapace), offers a fresh perspective, opposing the equality on offer in the…

ONE GOOD MAN Jurassic Park star Sam Neill is the latest big name coming to ITV’s new streaming platform ITVX. Neill plays a barrister in Australian courtroom drama The Twelve, which exposes the secrets, hopes, fears and lives of each of the 12 members of a jury on a murder case. It’s based on a Belgian drama but the format feels universal — could ITV be testing the waters for a British version? SOUNDS FUNNY Comic Chris McCausland has become a ubiquitous panel-show presence — now, Radio 4 has put him centre stage. You Heard It Here First, in which every question is based around a sound (McCausland is blind), is part of a new wave of Radio 4 comedies from the likes of Maisie Adam, Janey Godley and Jonathan Pie — as…

Oscar-nominated, action legend and — through major roles and his work with auteur director Pedro Almodóvar — long-time national treasure in his native Spain, Antonio Banderas may remain, for many around the world, best known for voicing an uppity tabby cat with a sword. Initially, a straightforward parody of Banderas’s swashbuckling big-screen Zorro, Puss in Boots made his debut in 2004’s animated Shrek 2, a film that made just short of a billion dollars at the box office. Nineteen years later and Puss has appeared in five movies including two of his own, and two TV specials. His latest, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish, sees the heroic cat on the last of his nine lives, facing death in the face — and flinching. Just your average kids’ movie story… Puss in…

MY TV START When I left the military, I became a celebrity bodyguard. I was approached by TV companies but was never interested. My friend Colin MacLachlan, who I took through SAS selection, became an instructor on SAS: Who Dares Wins. He asked me to join but I said no. There had been so many silly programmes using “SAS”. But I watched the first series and thought I could add my expertise, so I joined the second. The team then was Ant, Foxy, Ollie and me. Now I’m the chief instructor. MAKING THE SERIES IS LIKE BEING BACK IN THE MILITARY We have a professional approach — we don’t call it a show, we call it “the course”. There’s no script. We film 24 hours a day. The screaming and shouting are to…