Great Expectations, Celebrity Hunted and Late Night Lycett: TV highlights this week

Words by Rachael Popow

Forget those vintage Hollywood movies about plucky youngsters deciding to “do the show right here” – putting on a musical is actually a very difficult job.

It can be hugely expensive with no guarantees of returns. Although West End and Broadway have played host to plenty of hits that sounded unlikely on paper (before Hamilton, who would have guessed that a hip-hop musical about one of America’s founding fathers would become a phenomenon?) there have also been plenty of shows that must have seemed like sure-fire winners but were rejected by critics and audiences.

Conditions got even tougher for the industry during Covid, when theatres were forced to shut their doors. Luckily, the National Lottery stepped in to support 2,000 theatres during the crisis, and last year the stars decided to say thank you with a Big Night of Musicals hosted by Jason Manford.

It was such a success that Manford and the BBC are doing it all over again at AO Arena in Manchester. It’s also a reminder that while audiences no longer have to stick to social distancing, there are still plenty of challenges facing the performing arts due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

However, the mood will still be celebratory, not least because of the host. Although he’s best known as a comedian, Manford can certainly belt out a showtune himself. He’s appeared in musicals such as Sweeney Todd, The Producers, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Guys and Dolls, and also came second on the first series of The Masked Singer.

He says: “I’m thrilled to be back hosting The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals for another year. It was incredible to see so many amazing shows under one roof last year, and with 13 completely different shows set to perform this year, it’s guaranteed to be another cracker of a night!”

The extravaganza includes performances from some of the biggest West End and touring shows, including the aforementioned Hamilton.

That’s not the only show that puts a fresh twist on history as there’s also Six, the smash hit about the wives of Henry VIII that comes complete with a very catchy score.

There’s also Matilda, the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book which was recently turned into a film, Wicked, which will be heading to the big screen next year, and Newsies and The Bodyguard, which both started life as movies.

We get proof that audiences’ love of ‘jukebox musicals’ remains unabated with Mamma Mia, based on the music of Abba, We Will Rock You, which draws on the Queen back catalogue, and Ain’t Too Proud – The Life And Times Of The Temptations.

For those who prefer their musicals to be a bit more traditional, there’s the all-conquering Les Miserables, and the much-loved The King and I.

If all that wasn’t enough, there’s also a performance from Aspects Of Love, featuring West End legend Michael Ball, which tees us up nicely for BBC2’s Andrew Lloyd Webber night from 9.25pm.

Great Expectations (Sunday 26/03/23, BBC1, 9pm)

Words by Rachael Popow

A Christmas Carol must hold the record for the most-adapted story by Charles Dickens – even the Muppets had a go – but Great Expectations probably isn’t far behind.

David Lean’s 1946 movie, which is often considered the definitive big-screen take, was the fourth film to be based on the 1861 novel – the first, silent version appeared in 1917.

Since then, there have been more movie versions, including a 1998 version starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow which moved the action to contemporary New York, and a lot of TV adaptations. In the 2010s alone we had a BBC serial with Ray Winstone and Gillian Anderson, a movie with Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter, and a prequel, Magwitch.

So, why are there still such great expectations around the latest version, which arrives on BBC One tonight?

Well, for a start it’s comes from the pen of Steven Knight. As the man who gave us the international hit Peaky Blinders and last year’s acclaimed SAS Rogue Heroes, he’s got a very impressive track record.

He also brought us a 2019 version of A Christmas Carol, starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge, which kept the period setting, but proved that Knight could still put a dark, contemporary spin on one of the world’s best-know stories.

Knight seems to have something similar in mind for his new project, which he believes still strikes a chord with audiences. He says: “Adapting Dickens’ work is a delight. I chose Great Expectations as the next work to bring to the screen not just because of the timeless characters, but also because of the very timely story. A story of class mobility and class intransigence, told through an intensely emotional and personal first-person narrative.

“As the son of a blacksmith myself, Pip’s journey from the forge into society is a very special one to me.”

If that wasn’t enough to convince you, there’s also the impressive cast, headed by Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham. One of Dickens’ most memorable creations, the character was jilted on her big day and has been wearing her wedding dress ever since.

Taking on such an iconic role might be a daunting prospect for many actresses, but Colman, who won an Oscar playing Queen Anne in The Favourite and an Emmy for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, is more than up to the challenge.

Colman is joined by Dunkirk star Fionn Whitehead, who plays the adult Pip (Tom Sweet is the young version). He’s an orphan who lives with his cruel sister Sara (Hayley Squires) and her kindly blacksmith husband Joe (Owen McDonnell), but who believes he is destined for better things.

His life is about to be changed by two incidents – an encounter with an escaped convict, Magwitch (Johnny Harris), and a call from Mr Pumblechook (Matt Berry), who informs Sara and Joe that the wealthy, eccentric Miss Havisham is looking for a companion for her adopted daughter Estella (Chloe Lea as a child, Shalom Brune-Franklin as an adult) and thinks Pip could fit the bill.

Meeting Miss Havisham opens up a world of possibilities for Pip, but will this opportunity make him the man he wants to be?

Blue Lights (Monday 27/03/23, BBC One, 9pm)

Words by Sarah Morgan

The Beeb loves a female-led police drama.

Sally Wainwright probably has a lot to do with that – after all, she created the all-conquering Happy Valley which introduced the world to arguably the greatest fictional woman copper of all time (yes, even better than the lead in Juliet Bravo), the mighty Sgt Catherine Cawood, played so memorably by Sarah Lancashire across three ratings-busting seasons.

The series Better, starring Leila Farzad as DI Lou Slack, a corrupt officer trying to make amends for her misdemeanours, also recently ended its run on our screens – to be replaced by Blue Lights which, you guessed it, also has a female protagonist at its core.

You may also think the basic premise sounds familiar – especially if you’re a fan of US drama The Rookie, which can be seen over on Sky Witness. Nathan Fillion heads the cast of that show as John Nolan who, at the age of 45 and newly divorced, swapped Pennsylvania for a new life in LA where he joined the city’s police force, becoming its oldest trainee officer in the process.

The plot of Blue Lights is certainly reminiscent of it, although the action takes place in Belfast and is the brainchild of screenwriters Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, who also penned the hugely acclaimed three-parter The Salisbury Poisonings.

The pair met while working on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama before switching to fiction, and have recently set up their own production company, Hot Sauce Pictures, in the city.

“Every writer wants to explore their own place and their own society as authentically and as honestly as they can,” say the duo. “We feel enormously grateful to BBC drama for letting us do that with Blue Lights. And to do it with a cast boasting so much new and established talent makes it even more exciting.”

Taking the lead role is Sian Brooke, who drew on her ex-policeman father’s own experiences while playing Grace, a single forty-something mother of a teenage son. She decides to give up her career as a social worker to join the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). It’s a huge gamble and one that seems unlikely to pay off after a series of mistakes look set to land her in trouble.

“I am so thrilled to be playing Grace,” claims Brooke, who may be familiar from her work in Sherlock, Doctor Foster and Good Omens. “There is something incredibly special that Declan and Adam have crafted in these scripts and I was hooked from the very first page. Belfast is the beating heart of this piece and it’s a city I’ve been wanting to work in for a long time.”

Joining her are Katherine Devlin and Nathan Braniff as fellow rookies Annie and Tommy, who both face trying times in their first few weeks in uniform. Richard Dormer and John Lynch are also set to appear.

“Blue Lights explores a fascinating area we haven’t often seen before on TV and in a way that feels truly authentic,” adds Tommy Bulfin, BBC Drama’s commissioning editor. “Declan and Adam have written it with such wit and heart that you instantly feel like you know our three rookies intimately.

“I’m so excited to see our excellent cast portray such brilliant characters.”

Celebrity Hunted (Tuesday 28/03/23, Channel 4, 9pm)

Words by Richard Jones

It can’t be easy going incognito when you’re a celebrity.

Thankfully for the so-called ‘stars’ involved in the new series of Celebrity Hunted, they’re not the most recognisable personalities out there, and are not likely to be troubling the front pages of the gossip magazines anytime soon.

Arguably the best known of this year’s celebrity fugitives, taking part in aid of Stand Up To Cancer, are comedians and Off Menu Podcast hosts, Ed Gamble and James Acaster.

Their involvement in the series was actually revealed last summer when Ed was forced to present his Radio X show in hiding from an undisclosed location.

While on air, he repeatedly called the Hunters “thick”, prompting chief hunter Lisa Theaker to call into the show herself, telling Ed he is “the worst fugitive we have ever had in the history of the Channel 4 show”.

Ed replied: “We’re absolutely terrible, and they’ve still not caught us. So what does that say about the Hunters?”

“To be fair, though, we did go for a nice meal in Shrewsbury when there was a helicopter chasing us, which wasn’t the smartest idea…”

Ed and James are joined in this year’s line-up by Strictly Come Dancing star Katya Jones and her best friend, TV presenter and former Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller.

There’s also Coronation Street actress turned broadcaster Nicola Thorp and her boyfriend, The Devil’s Hour and Indian Summers actor Nikesh Patel.

This Morning therapists and life-change experts Nik and Eva Speakman are the fourth pair, and the line-up is completed by YouTuber Saffron Barker, alongside TV mathematician Bobby Seagull.

Their goal is simple: to try to stay off the radar so and go undetected by the Hunters for two weeks.

But fans of the show will know that this task a lot harder than it seems.

The hunters are a handpicked team of police and military personnel, headed up by Theaker.

They are armed with the powers of the state – CCTV and ANPR cameras, drones, dogs, mobile phone tracking and social media publicity campaigns.

They will use use intuition, determination and cutting-edge technical surveillance to try and track them down.

Having had to uncover the whereabouts of just eight celebrities in recent series, the Hunters have their work cut out this time tracking down 10 famous faces.

In tonight’s first episode, nine celebrities escape from life behind bars at Shrewsbury prison and go on the run.

The hunters are instantly on their tails tracking them with CCTV cameras and a helicopter.

Katya and Aimee take off in a vintage Vespa with sidecar.

Meanwhile, husband-and-wife team Nik and Eva escape on a tandem bike, hoping that their family network will prove to be an asset and not a weakness.

Bobby takes the wheel – but his limited skills as a getaway driver put him and Saffron at risk.

And solo fugitive Nicola escapes in a vintage Jag with plans to get her boyfriend, Nikesh, onboard as the 10th fugitive. However, the hunters appear to be ready for him.

And finally, James and Ed sit down for a six-course tasting menu at a Michelin guide restaurant. Now that’s a daring move if ever there was one.

The Bay (Wednesday 29/03/23, ITV1, 9pm)

Words by Rachael Popow

When Marsha Thomason joined the third series of The Bay, she and her character DS Jenn Townsend were very much the new girls – the drama had previously starred Morven Christie as family liaison officer Lisa Armstrong.

Luckily, viewers were quick to accept Jenn, and it seems it was a similar story among the cast.

Marsha explains: “It was so great coming back for series four. Last year… I was a bit nervous, whereas this year I felt much more confident coming in and it was just so nice.

“We all became friends and are all in touch when we aren’t filming. It is especially nice coming back and seeing everybody as I live in LA, they would get together for dinner or drinks and they would send pictures so I’d be sad I was missing out so it’s been great to come back.”

It’s probably a mark of just how well Marsha (and Jenn) have fitted in that the show’s writers felt confident getting this latest run off to a very dramatic start.

For anyone who missed the opening episode, Marsha explains: “This series starts with a fire, which was really intense and so incredibly sad. It was really hard to watch as we were shooting it, very harrowing. I got very emotional.

“Right at the top of episode one, [Jenn] gets a phone call, gets there as soon as she can and this house is ablaze and the kids are outside shouting and it is just heart-breaking. This is a particularly challenging case with some delicate relationships to manage, with the surviving children to look out for and how we handle all of that.”

She adds: “There are four children in the family. Two of them are teenagers, but two of them are still quite young, so Jenn has to tread carefully.

“What’s interesting about the case this year is that there is a grieving family and the dad hasn’t really been very hands on with them ever so this is the first time he’s ever had to step up and take care of them on his own whilst dealing with this grief, whilst he is trying to keep his business afloat and everything that comes with that.”

That becomes clear in this episode as the dad in question, Dean, is faced with another life-changing event, and tries to escape from his grief by going back to work. Is it an understandable urge to restore some normality, or is Jenn right to fear that he’s about to do something he might live to regret?

Meanwhile, Jenn is also under pressure – her work is taking up so much of her attention, she’s failed to notice that her own kids are in trouble. As if that wasn’t stressful enough, Manning wants her to keep something from the team so that his personal and professional lives don’t start colliding.

At least the cops may be about to make some progress, when a suspect they’ve been searching for hands himself in, leading to a surprising revelation.

Jason & Clara: In Memory of Maudie (Thursday 30/03/23, ITV1, 9pm)

Words by Sarah Morgan

Every parent’s worst nightmare is the loss of a child.

Thankfully, the majority of us never have to experience that feeling. But tragically, for actor Jason Watkins and his designer wife Clara Francis, that nightmare became a reality in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2011 when their beautiful little girl, Maudie, passed away at the age of just two-and-a-half.

She’d gone to bed the previous night with what the couple had been told by doctors was croup.

“The symptoms seemed harmless,” says Jason in a video he made for The UK Sepsis Trust, an organisation the couple have worked with since their daughter’s death. “They seemed like any other cold, or flu, or stomach ache. But we now know that something else was going on underneath.

“If I was aware, I would have asked. There would have definitely been a different outcome, so the way that you can look after your children, and your families and the people you meet, is to take a deep breath and think, ‘could this be sepsis? I’m going to ask someone’, because you could save their life.”

Jason is one of those actors who have been around for years and is instantly recognisable despite the public perhaps not knowing his name – he’s appeared in such high profile series as Line of Duty, The Crown and McDonald & Dodds, and won a Bafta for his stunning performance in The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.

He’s been able to use his familiarity to raise awareness of the condition, which sees the body’s immune system overreact to an infection, causing it to go into overdrive and attack the body’s tissues and organs.

Jason and Clara are hoping their new documentary will boost the public’s knowledge even more – after all, sepsis is not rare. Figures released by the aforementioned UK Sepsis Trust reveal that around 245,000 people in the UK develop it every year, and that as many as 45,000 of them die. It’s often described as a ‘silent killer’, one that claims more lives each year than bowel, prostate and breast cancer combined.

Now, as the couple and their surviving children, Bessie and Gilbert, prepare to move from the flat where Maudie was born and died, they feel the time is right to open up about what happened.

During a recent appearance on This Morning to promote the Channel 5 series The Catch – in which he channelled his own experiences into playing a bereaved father – Jason said of the documentary, “…it is about spreading awareness… about letting people know that if you’ve lost a child, always mention it. It’s never worse than feeling your child never existed. It is a sharing of our story – it was hard to make.

“It is to say to other families that there is help. By talking about it it can help you and make you feel less alone, because it is a very lonely journey.”

Jason & Clara: In Memory of Maudie won’t be easy to watch either, but if it prevents just one death and saves one family such terrible heartbreak, tuning in will have been more than worth it.

Late Night Lycett (Friday 31/03/23, Channel 4, 10pm)

Words by Richard Jones

Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross had better watch their backs – there’s a new chat-show kid on the block.

Following the success of his Big Pride Party on Channel 4 last year, for which the host was nominated for a National Comedy Award, Joe Lycett is back broadcasting live from his hometown of Birmingham for the next five weeks.

Each Friday, a mix of Joe’s community of local legends, LGBTQ+ heroes and allies will join the host, alongside celebrities and big-name guests from the worlds of comedy, TV, music and film.

With inclusivity and fun at its heart, Late Night Lycett will see Joe take a look back at the week – combining his unique brand of mischief and mayhem with his singular style of comedy.

As well as roping his guests into games and sketches, he offers audience members the chance to win his own possessions.

Back in December, Lycett teased fans with a then unnamed series on Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 breakfast show, saying he had been pitching it to Channel 4 for ages.

Late Night Lycett is said to have been inspired by Chris Evans’s groundbreaking 1990s show, TFI Friday, and as it’s shot on the on the banks of Birmingham’s canals, he is hoping it will bring a touch of Hollywood sparkle to Digbeth.

Joe says: “I’m absolutely psyched and naturally very nervous about hosting a weekly live show from Birmingham, but it has been a dream of mine for many years and I look forward to some (controlled) late night chaos.”

Meanwhile, Emily Hudd, the joint MD at the production company Rumpus Media, adds: “We are so excited that Joe is hosting this series from the centre of his universe – Birmingham – creating a truly inclusive show to which everyone is invited.

“It’s a weekly celebration uniquely curated by Joe that harnesses both his mischief but also his warmth – it will be funny, silly and explicitly Joe Lycett.”

One the past few years, the 34-year-old comic has previously appeared on Live at the Apollo, Taskmaster, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, 8 Out of 10 Cats, QI, as the announcer on Saturday BBC One show Epic Win, the narrator for Ibiza Weekender and as the presenter on The Great British Sewing Bee and Travel Man.

In addition, his consumer rights show, Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, won the prestigious RTS Programme Award for Best Formatted Popular Factual.

The show also generated headlines around the Qatar World Cup in November when the host threatened to shred £10,000 of his own money destined for queer charities in football, unless David Beckham pulled out of his multi-million pound promotion of the tournament.

And Lycett’s lofty ambitions seemingly don’t stop at chat shows.

Earlier this month, he even said he was “very much available” to step in and host Match of the Day after BBC’s decision to temporally remove Gary Lineker from the programme.

“I have informed the BBC that I am very much available for tomorrow’s #MOTD,” Lycett posted, in a Tweet that received tens of thousands of likes.

That’s something many of his fans would love to see – but let’s see how he gets on with this new chat and entertainment show first.