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From left: Viewpoint; Alan Partridge; the Oscars; Anita Rani; Starstruck. Photograph: Composite

This week’s home entertainment: from Alan Partridge to Viewpoint

This article is more than 2 years old
From left: Viewpoint; Alan Partridge; the Oscars; Anita Rani; Starstruck. Photograph: Composite

Steve Coogan’s cringetastic daytime TV host returns for a second series, while Noel Clarke stars in a gripping new police drama

Television

This Time With Alan Partridge

Steve Coogan returns with the second series of this toe-curling pastiche of daytime TV staples and perma-smiling magazine shows like The One Show. Despite being established as This Time’s co-presenter, Partridge is still paranoid about his role following behind-the-scenes upheaval. Susannah Fielding returns as his patient fellow host, Jennie Gresham.
Friday 30 April, 9.30pm, BBC One

Starstruck

Comedian Rose Matafeo is the star and co-writer of this series about the aftermath of a one-night stand. Matefeo is Jessie, who, in between juggling two jobs, finds herself in an awkward situation when she realises her post-night out bed companion is a film star.
Sunday 25 April, BBC Three

Yasuke

Based on the much-mythologised life of the first samurai of African descent to serve in 16th-century Japan, this animated series is created by LeSean Thomas and features music from Flying Lotus. In feudal Japan, Yasuke relinquishes his retirement to protect a mysterious child.
Thursday 29 April, Netflix

Theroux the wringer … The Mosquito Coast. Photograph: Apple

The Mosquito Coast

Justin Theroux and Melissa George star as a couple on the run in this tense adaptation of the bestselling 1981 novel of the same name, written by Justin’s uncle Paul Theroux. Justin plays Allie Fox, an idealist and inventor who uproots his family, including two confused teenagers, to Mexico after he’s suddenly tracked down by the US government.
Friday 30 April, Apple TV+

Love Fraud

Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, this docuseries follows US bounty hunter Carla Campbell as she tries to track down Richard Scott Smith, a Kansas man accused of duping multiple women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Friday 30 April, Amazon Prime Video

The 93rd Academy Awards

The Zoom-based awards season reaches its pinnacle with the Oscars. Streamed from LA and London, all eyes will be on whether favourite Nomadland will take best picture and if British writer-director Emerald Fennell wins anything for Promising Young Woman.
Sunday 25 April, 12midnight, Sky Cinema Oscars

She’s got the Coben … The Innocent. Photograph: Quim Vives

The Innocent

Netflix’s latest adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel following binge-worthy series The Stranger is this twisty Spanish-language thriller. Recently released from prison, Mateo (Mario Casas) reunites with his wife Olivia (Aura Garrido), but their life is again thrown into turmoil by a phone call.
Friday 30 April, Netflix

Saved By a Stranger

Anita Rani presents this emotional series focusing on random acts of kindness during some of the biggest events in living memory. Episode one follows Karl, who was comforted by a stranger in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in London.
Thursday 29 April, 9pm, BBC Two

Viewpoint

After a primary school teacher goes missing in a tight-knit Manchester community, it’s up to Noel Clarke’s police surveillance detective DC Martin Young to solve the case. He sets up his observation post in the home of a single mother (and secret voyeur) Zoe, witnessing a tense and intimate drama as the street’s public and private lives unfold.
Monday 26 April, 9pm, ITV

Watch this space … Intergalactic. Photograph: Des Willie

Intergalactic

Savannah Steyn stars as galactic pilot Ash Harper in this sci-fi drama. After being wrongly convicted of a crime and bound for a distant prison colony, she is caught up in a jailbreak, with the convicts planning to head for a free planet. Thomas Turgoose and Parminder Nagra co-star.
Friday 30 April, 9pm, Sky One

Podcasts

The Line

This debut audio offering from Apple TV+ plays as the first half of a forthcoming TV docuseries, examining the life of former Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, who in 2018 was charged with committing war crimes after he had posed for a photo with a corpse in Iraq. Host Dan Taberski interviews Gallagher and a host of experts following his 2019 pardon by President Trump.
Weekly, Apple Podcasts

The Lazarus Heist

The BBC’s World Service brings this new podcast series telling the story of an attempted $1bn virtual heist thought to have been performed by North Korean hackers who broke into the digital vaults of Bangladesh Bank. Journalists Geoff White and Jean Lee unpick the scandal and the claims that it was ultimately a state-sponsored crime.
Weekly, BBC Sounds

Crossing The Line ... Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, subject of The Line podcast. Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/Getty

Science Weekly

The Guardian’s science team, including reporters Ian Sample, Hannah Devlin and Nicola Davis, continue to bring us the key scientific developments in Covid and beyond. Recent highlights have included an analysis of our reactions to different types of screams and the controversy surrounding the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Weekly, the Guardian

The Moon Under Water

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and God knows comic and BBC Radio 5 Live presenter John Robins has missed pubs over the past year. Along with co-host “the lovely Robin” (Allender), this is a show about dream taverns, probing guests (such as Nish Kumar) about their fantasy watering holes.
Weekly, widely available

Cocaine & Rhinestones

After a long wait, this hugely successful pod exploring the more colourful aspects of country music’s history returns. Host Tyler Mahan Coe was granted access to the Country Music Hall of Fame this time around, so expect expertly researched stories aimed at providing new contexts for oft-told fables.
Weekly, widely available

Reality bites … Black Bear.

Film

Black Bear

(15) (Lawrence Michael Levine) 105 mins
A teasing air of mystery pervades this drama exploring the creative process. Aubrey Plaza could fill a showreel with her committed performance as a film writer-director – or is she an actor? – staying at a lakeside log cabin, in back-to-back narratives that also feature Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon. Reality and fiction blur to emotional effect.
On digital

Fear of Rain

(15) (Castille Landon) 104 mins
A mental health drama melded with a Sixth Sense-style thriller, it stars Madison Iseman as Rain, a teenager with schizophrenia, who thinks a neighbour has abducted a child – but is it a hallucination? A mixed bag in terms of sensitivity but it is consistently tense.
On digital, out Mon

Sisters With Transistors

(PG) (Lisa Rovner) 86 mins
A largely unsung roll call of female electronic music pioneers feature in this fascinating historical primer. Éliane Radigue, Daphne Oram, Pauline Oliveros, Suzanne Ciani – all found creative autonomy away from the musical establishment through tape loops and synthesisers.
On digital

History of violence … Labyrinth of Cinema

Labyrinth of Cinema

(No cert) (Nobuhiko Ôbayashi) 179 mins
The late director’s final film is an antiwar epic: a cartoonish, scattergun journey through Japan’s history via its war movies. Four teenagers at a small-town cinema find themselves inside the screen, participating in samurai battles, imperial intrigue, 1930s atrocities and the bombing of Hiroshima.
Mubi, out Tuesday 27 April

Spring Blossom

(PG) (Suzanne Lindon) 74 mins
Lindon was only 20 when she made this sweet if slight tale. Parisian 16-year-old Suzanne (Lindon) and 35-year-old actor Raphaël (Arnaud Valois) fall hesitantly in love. Given their ages, it’s a slightly uncomfortable watch.
Curzon Home Cinema

That’ll Be the Day

Taking its cue from the Beatles’ early lives, this identifiably 70s-made kitchen sink drama stars David Essex (slightly knocking the shine off his pop image) as Jim MacLaine, a late-50s kid obsessed with rock’n’roll and girls but with no serious plan for life. Ringo Starr puts in a fine stint as his more experienced buddy.
Wednesday 28 April, 10.25pm, Talking Pictures TV

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