This week’s classic movie is Alexander Mackendrick’s dark 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers, where five oddball criminals (led by Alec Guinness) meet their match in an elderly landlady. This series three opener tasks the family with deciding what to recycle, donate or sell an agonising prospect for mother Chloe, who struggles to part with nostalgic baby toys. The house of the Watling family is so cluttered with toys, books and unopened travel-sized jars of jam that Stacey Solomon struggles to make it from one room to the next.
Certain moments may stretch credulity, but it is stylishly shot and compellingly twisty. The plot thickens when John claims that Ingrid is in danger… and is proved right. This brooding six-part drama follows young barrister Ingrid (Emma Appleton), who finds herself being stalked by former client – and lover – John (Colin Morgan). Its finale is a fittingly epic farewell, with Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane Robinson) meeting their match in Jonny McGee (Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan), the ruthless nephew of an Irish drug lord. The slick east London gangster thriller has enjoyed a successful second life (post Channel 4) after being revived by Netflix. All of which is delivered with the knowing wink that the rules are destined to be broken. There is a morbid playfulness, for example, in how Candy and Allan negotiate their affair like a business deal, drawing up stipulations such as “don’t be careless” and “don’t get too emotionally involved”. Similarly, Love & Death walks a fine line between prestige and trash TV. It is not a grand reinvention of the true-crime wheel, but it is bolstered by a witty script from David E Kelley, the man responsible for mega-hit Big Little Lies. “Would you be interested in having an affair?” The intermittent flashes of future bloodshed – the result of a gruesome axe murder – assure us that it doesn’t end well. “I’m very attracted to you,” she tells him, nonchalantly.
The unlikely target is Allan, a schlubby friend from church played by the marvellous Jesse Plemons. Naturally, she decides that the solution is to have a fling. She plays Candy Montgomery, a repressed 1970s housewife who longs for something more fulfilling, and exciting, from life than what her small Texan town can offer. Marvel star Elizabeth Olsen is on sparkling form in this glossy seven-part true-crime drama.
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