Pushers, Glastonbury and Celebrity Puzzling: TV highlights this week

Suspicion (Saturday 21/06/25, ITV1, 10.45pm)

Words by Sarah Morgan

When you think of nations producing great TV, what springs to mind? Britain, of course, and America too. After that, if you’re a fan of European crime dramas, Scandinavian countries probably pop up, or even France, which has made its fair share of humdingers over the years.

Israel has come up with some incredible shows too, but you might not realise it because our exposure to them has been via remakes tailored to suit western audiences. As a result, Prisoners of War became the US series Hostages and teen drama Euphoria was also revamped in America, although it retained its name.

Even the likes of Homeland and In Treatment were created over there. Another to add to that list is British thriller Suspicion, whose original version was entitled False Flag.

If the title and cast – which includes Uma Thurman, Robert Glenister, Lydia West, Kunal Nayyar, Georgina Campbell and Elyes Gabel – sounds familiar, that’s perhaps because it was made available to view on Apple TV+ back in early 2022. Now, those of us without a subscription to the streaming service are getting a welcome chance to see it.

It may be a surprise to spot a Hollywood luminary such as Thurman in a British series, but she’s always been interested in doing good work, rather than making sure she earns a hefty paycheque or appears in something that will lift her profile.

“I think as a teenager starting out in the time where auteur filmmakers were the king of the cinema, I was very impacted by that,” she told the DuJour News website ahead of her Broadway debut in The Parisian Woman in 2018. “Sometimes you get everything: the part is perfect, there’s a lot for you to do, you love the other actors, you love the director, the script is brilliant. Sometimes it’s not necessarily so obvious but you love that director’s work and so you put yourself in their hands.”

Thurman has certainly been doing that since her acting career began when she was still only 17 years of age. Early roles saw her work for Terry Gilliam on The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Stephen Frears on Dangerous Liaisons. She really hit pay dirt in 1994 when Quentin Tarantino cast her as crime boss’s wife Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, for which she received an Oscar nomination.

Director and star worked together again on Kill Bill Vols 1&2; other major projects include The Truth About Cats & Dogs, The Producers and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, while success on the small screen came with a Golden Globe-winning performance in 2002’s Hysterical Blindness.

These days she’s as likely to be seen supporting the careers of her elder two children, Maya and Levon Hawke, from her seven-year marriage to fellow thespian Ethan Hawke, although she remains as busy as ever, with several big projects in the pipeline, including the movie The Old Guard 2 and series Dexter: Resurrection, both of which will be available to stream (on Netflix and Paramount+ respectively) next month.

In Suspicion, she plays a prominent businesswoman whose 21-year-old son is kidnapped from a swanky New York hotel. Several British guests become the prime suspects – but who, if any of them, is the guilty party?

Walking with Dinosaurs (Sunday 22/06/25, BBC One, 6.25pm)

Words by Sarah Morgan

Next week, we’re entering Jurassic Park for the final episode. Well, sort of. We’ll be taken back to that particular geological era, but before that can happen, we’re spending a wee bit of time in the Cretaceous period instead, the time when the Pachyrhinosaurus roamed areas of what is now Alberta, Canada.

The edition focuses on a team of palaeontologists led by Dr Emily Bamforth as they excavate an example of the creature’s horned, bony head frill, which is similar to that of the more famous Triceratops.

“This episode is based on 50 years of research conducted northwest Alberta,” says Bamforth. “The Pipestone Creek Bonebed, tucked away in Canada’s mixed boreal forest, captures the moment when a herd of potentially thousands of Pachyrhinosaurus was preserved in a single event. The bonebed provides an unparalleled opportunity for paleontologists to study growth, social structure, parental care, and behavior in a single community of dinosaur from a single point in time.

“The episode uses VFX and the integration of science-in-action to beautifully capture the immensity and scale of the bonebed, revealing the dramatic story of this dinosaur mega-herd, and the late Cretaceous world in which they lived.”

The series has been a labour of love for many years for all those involved in it, and showrunner Kirsty Wilson reckons that working on the programme is a privilege. “Being on the dig sites, capturing moments on camera where segments of dinosaur arm bones bigger than us emerged from the ground, or filming the remains of one of the largest herds on earth to have ever existed, and knowing we were the first people to see them in over 65 million years ago, was staggering,” says the TV producer, who specialises in natural history subjects.

However, life on set wasn’t always serious, as she’s keen to point out: “There were some really silly moments I will never forget, like watching members of the production team stomping around, running or even swimming through rivers on location, head to toe in blue suits pretending to be dinosaurs!

“For the record this wasn’t what the team got up to in their downtime… We dress in head to toe blue (including full face masks) and walk about to create movement in the environment, as if we were dinosaurs brushing past ferns or creating ripples in the water, and then the VFX company can remove us from the shot later – the blue suit makes this a lot easier.”

As for the hard work, it was all worth it. “There were so many things we encountered that took us by surprise that we had to adjust to,” explains Wilson. “But ultimately when we saw our hero dinosaurs, characters we had been thinking of, writing about, looking at their bones for years, finally come to life on screen for the very first time, it was truly unforgettable and actually quite emotional.”

So while we’re not likely to see Steven Spielberg wielding a camera, or Sam Neill and his human co-stars fending off prehistoric creatures, rest assured the programme will still be very exciting indeed.

Celebrity Puzzling (Monday 23/06/25, 5, 7pm)

Words by Rachael Popow

Here’s a teaser for you – what would you get if you crossed ITV1’s hit The 1% Club with teatime favourite Richard Osman’s House of Games? Well, it might look a little bit like 5’s new series Celebrity Puzzling.

It sees famous faces tackling a range of fun and fiendish puzzles, which test their logic, lateral thinking and problem-solving, all for the bragging rights of being Britain’s best celebrity puzzler.

The show also boasts an impressive quiz show pedigree. For a start, it’s hosted by Jeremy Vine, who previously presented Eggheads.

He’s certainly happy to be back in the question master role, saying: “It’s amazing to do a quiz that’s so simple and yet feels so fresh in every way. Celebrity Puzzling is one of those shows where, from the very first edition, everything fell into place with our amazing 5 team… and we just had the greatest fun in the studio. Not to mention burning through quite a few brain cells as we all tried to solve those beastly puzzles!”

He’s also full of praise for the show’s team captains, Countdown legend Carol Vorderman, and 5 regular Sally Lindsay, who is best known as an actress in Coronation Street and The Madame Blanc Mysteries, but is now putting her quiz skills to the test.

Given her reputation as a maths whiz, it may seem like answering the questions here should be easy for Carol, but she’s keen to sound a note of caution.

She says: “I’m so excited to be a team captain on Celebrity Puzzling. Finally, all those years of loving numbers, words and brainteasers are about to pay off! Well, I hope that they are.

“Joining forces with my brilliant and really good mate Sally Lindsay, and with the ever-clever Jeremy Vine keeping us all in line, it’s going to be a battle of brains… and I’m going to be fighting all the way, of course!”

Still, it’s easy to see what Sally was a little bit daunted at the prospect of taking Carol on, but luckily she enjoyed the experience. She says: “I was honestly a bit nervous about this challenge as I’m more your general knowledge type but even though it was really competitive at times I surprised myself on some rounds! If you love a puzzle you will love this!”

It turns out plenty of celebrities love a brain-teaser too, as the names lined up to compete in this first series include Stephen Bailey, Miles Jupp, Shaun Williamson, Les Dennis, John Thomson, Dom Joly, Russell Kane, Melvin Odoom, David James, Scarlett Moffatt, Dr Ranj Singh, Sam Quek and Rav Wilding.

Perhaps the name gameshow fans will be most excited about is comedian Paul Sinha, aka The Chase’s Sinnerman. We know his general knowledge is impressive, but how is it lateral thinking? We’ll have to wait to find out, as the first famous faces to take part are presenter Ore Oduba and choirmaster Gareth Malone. They’ll be competing in rounds including In Other Words, Thirdle, Cinema Cypher, Heat Map and Memory Bank.

Why Cities Flood: Spain’s Deadly Disaster (Tuesday 24/06/25, BBC One, 9pm)

Words by Richard Jones

On October 29, 2024, the terrifying power of nature was unleashed in all its fury when a huge storm hit the area around Valencia in Spain.

Torrential rain fell on the hills to the west of the city, causing devastating flash floods, with cars tossed around like toys and buildings torn down.

To make matters even worse, the regional authorities were caught unaware and failed to alert people in time.

In the apocalyptic aftermath, the Spanish streets looked like they have been blasted back to medieval times, covered by layers of mud that obscured any glimpse of pavement or cobblestone.

And across the province, 228 people died, making it Europe’s deadliest single storm flood since 1967, when 500 perished in Portugal.

This film tells the story of what happened that fateful day, through dramatic mobile-phone footage taken as floodwater poured through streets, inundated houses and turned parked cars into lethal, floating projectiles.

We hear first-hand accounts from survivors who had close escapes. Among the eyewitnesses are Rosalía Arenas, a resident of Utiel, who took refuge on the upper floor of her house with her mother and two-year-old daughter as floodwater filled the ground floor to within inches of the ceiling. They were eventually rescued by boat from an upstairs window.

Meanwhile, Andries Klarenberg, a resident of Paiporta, the town worst hit by the flood with 46 fatalities, tells us how he witnessed people driving their cars up from underground garages to try to save them from the flood, just before local river, the Rambla del Poyo, broke its banks.

Karen-Marie Loftus recounts her terrifying experience on a Spanish motorway when floodwater filled the carriageway bringing traffic to a halt.

Daniel Burguet and four young children were trapped inside the English language school he runs in Paiporta.

With no second floor to climb to, he waded through floodwater and broke the door of a nearby block of flats to get the youngsters to safety.

Although the rainfall was extreme – it broke the Spanish records for the most rain in an hour and the most rain in 12 hours – the authorities have also been accused of failing to protect people with their slow response.

When Spain’s King and Queen visited the area, along with the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, they were heckled and pelted with mud, while a crowd of 130,000 people demanded the resignation of Valencia’s leader, Carlos Mazón.

At the heart of the grievances is a mobile-phone alert that was sent out across Valencia at 8:11pm, about two hours after the flood began.

With that in mind, the film also looks at a new flood warning system called FLASH which was developed in the United States and might have provided an earlier warning.

As the human population grows around the world, more people are living in areas liable to flood. This is a particular issue for the UK, with an estimated one in 13 new homes built in a flood zone and the effects of global warming only making the problem even worse.

Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges (Wednesday 25/06/25, BBC One, 9pm)

Words by Richard Jones

For his BBC Two series Amol Rajan Interviews, the journalist has become an expert at getting inside the the minds of era-defining pioneers, game-changers, leaders and maverick thinkers.

Now, in this one-off documentary, he is opening up about his own life, as he joins the biggest gathering on Earth – the Maha Kumbh Mela Festival in northern India.

Taking place once every 12 years, the event is considered a once-in-a-lifetime event and sees up to 500 million pilgrims from all over the globe take holy dips in sacred rivers, believing it purifies sins, gains salvation for themselves and their families, and brings them closer to spiritual liberation.

“It is a Hindu pilgrimage, which is the biggest gathering of humanity anywhere ever, where people go bathing in a sacred river,” the Today and University Challenge presenter host says.

“Every 12 years is a particularly special one because of the alignment of Jupiter with the Moon, the Sun and Earth, and this year was the 12th one, so it was 144 years.

“Just to give you a sense of what that means, on any one day in a makeshift pop-up mega city, only about 15 square miles, about the size of Winchester, the entire population of Britain, 70 million people, try to get into this one patch of earth.

“And over the course of 45 days, 500 million people, one-and-a-half times the size of America, are all trying to do exactly the same thing. So, the Kumbh Mela is busy, it’s holy, and it’s very powerful.

The purpose for Amol’s trip to northern India is two-fold.

Not only is he hoping to experience this epic pilgrimage for the first time, he is going on a profoundly personal journey.

Amol, who turns 42 next month, was born in India to a practising Hindu family and has struggled to come to terms with the ‘unbearable agony’ following the death of his father, P Varadarajan, three years ago.

He hopes that reconnecting with his birthplace at one of Hinduism’s most important religious events might help him process his grief.

“I’m Indian,” he explains. “I grew up in England, but I was born in India, I’ve got Indian heritage, I’m from a Hindu family, and I’ve always had this deep fascination with India and particularly with the biggest event in human history.

“If you look at the pictures of Kumbh Mela, when it’s come around, there are more people in one place than ever before, anywhere, and they’re all trying to get to this one spot, and that sounds absolutely terrifying, but also absolutely fascinating.

“So partly being Indian and wanting to reconnect with my Indian heritage, but also my dad died three years ago, and I’ve kind of avoided thinking about him and thinking about India, because when I thought about India, I thought about him.”

Amol explains what he thinks his father would have made of his trip.

“He would have loved it,” he says. “If I’d said to him that I was going, he’d have probably said two things.

“The first is, ‘What about your hygiene?’, because my dad was keen on hygiene.

“But the other thing he would have said is ‘make the most of it’.”

Pushers (Thursday 26/06/25, Channel 4, 10pm & 10.30pm)

Rachael Popow

Comedian Rosie Jones has built up an impressive TV CV over the past few years – she’s appeared on panels shows, competed on Taskmaster, been a roving reporter at the Paralympics and hosted her own travelogue Trip Hazard: My Great British Adventure.

Now though she knows she’s officially made it because she has her own sitcom, Pushers.

Rosie says: “I feel like from the moment that I decided that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian, having your own sitcom is the pinnacle. I grew up on the greats like Dinnerladies and The Royle Family, so to get to the stage where I have my own sitcom, even though it’s been seven years in the making, I just can’t believe it. It’s a dream come true!”

Pushers started life as a pilot (or in Channel 4’s parlance, ‘Comedy Blap’) called Disability Benefits, before launching as a full series last week with a double bill.

If you missed the blap and the first two episode, it stars co-writer and co-creator Jones as Emily, a woman with cerebral palsy, who feels like life is going nowhere after she’s made redundant from her job and her benefits are slashed.

So, when her old school friend Ewen (Ryan McParland), says she can make some extra money by delivering a package for him, she takes him up on the offer.

And when it turns out the parcel contains drugs, she sees a chance to start a whole new career. After all, in a world where she’s often patronised if she’s not ignored altogether, who will suspect her of running a drugs empire?

Not only that, Emily begins to recruit some other seemingly unlikely pushers.

Making the show may have been a dream come true, but Jones admits that being the star and the writer has also brought some extra pressures.

She laughs: “It was an added challenge because I’ve never been the main character in a show before, I’ve never been number one on the call sheet! Although that was great in some respects, because I’m a narcissist and I love to be the lead and in control, being the main character and being the writer really adds on a lot of work because you set the temperature of the whole show.”

Perhaps her character could sympathise with all that multitasking as in tonight’s double bill, Emily (Rosie Jones) and Ewen (Ryan McParland) are to struggling the demands of drug dealing with their burgeoning love lives. It gets even trickier when their chaotic colleague Sean (Jon Furlong) derails their plans for a double date by announcing that he has just lost their latest consignment of spice.

Meanwhile, Emily breaks the golden rule of ‘don’t get high on your own supply’ and tries drugs for the first time.

Then in the second episode, Ewen thinks it’s time to get out of the drugs game – which might be one of his better ideas, as the police and some dangerous enemies are closing in. Will Emily agree to end their operation?

Glastonbury 2025 Live (Friday 27/06/25, BBC1, 7.30pm, BBC4, 7pm & BBC2, 8pm)

Words by Rachael Popow

Earlier this month, Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis announced that following concerns about overcrowding at some stages in 2024, the festival had sold “a few thousand less tickets” this year.

But while the crowds may be slightly smaller, there’s a good chance that more people than ever will be watching the festival, thanks to the BBC.

Lorna Clarke, BBC Director of Music says: “This year, we’re making it easier than ever for millions of music fans to access Glastonbury’s standout moments, whilst also giving them the freedom to explore the festival their way – Glastonbury is theirs and the BBC brings it to them.”

In practice, that means BBC iPlayer will be bringing viewers over 90 hours of performances with live streams of the five main stages (Pyramid, Other, West Holts, Woodsies and The Park).

There’ll also be broadcasts on BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4, not to mention Radios 1, 2 and 6 Music, and special editions of everything from the CBeebies Bedtime Stories to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour coming from Worthy Farm.

Naturally that amount of coverage calls for a big presenting team, and the squad this year is (deep breath) Anita Rani, Annie Macmanus, Arielle Free, Cerys Matthews, Clara Amfo, Craig Charles, Danni Diston, Danny Howard, Deb Grant, Dermot O’Leary, DJ Target, Gilles Peterson, Greg James, Huw Stephens, Jack Saunders, Jamz Supernova, Jo Whiley, Lauren Laverne, Matt Everitt, Nathan Shepherd, Nick Grimshaw, Sam MacGregor, Sarah Story, Steve Lamacq and Zoe Ball.

You might also have noticed that the build-up started early – throughout the week, there have been compilation shows, and on Thursday night, Lauren Laverne and Clara Amfo hosted a 30-minute live preview.

The main event though begins tonight at 7pm as on BBC1 The One Show features a live link-up to the festival, followed by Clara and Lauren’s update on all the big talking points from the first full day.

At the same time, BBC4 brings us sets from two critically acclaimed indie bands – English Teacher and Wet Leg.

From 8pm on BBC2, there’s coverage of Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, who is making her Glastonbury debut, 30 years after her album Jagged Little Pill made her a global star. There’s more 1990s nostalgia courtesy of R&B group En Vogue, or you can switch back to BBC4 for Supergrass.

The evening continues with the return of Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro to the Pyramid Stage, while legendary New York rapper Busta Rhymes takes over the Other Stage.

It’s all building up to the weekend’s first headliners, The 1975, who can be seen on BBC1 from 10.30pm.

There’ll be more coverage across the weekend, with highlights set to include headliners Neil Young (who did briefly pull out after claiming the BBC’s involvement meant the festival was ‘now under corporate control’, but then changed his mind), and Olivia Rodrigo.

Meanwhile, the traditional Sunday afternoon legends slot is occupied by Rod Stewart.

As it’s Glastonbury, there may also be a few surprise and secret sets to watch out for over the course of what is set to be an unforgettable weekend.