The Flight Attendant, Line of Duty and The Windsors: What to watch on TV this weekend

Sky Rojo

Line of Duty

Sky Rojo

Pat Stacey

March 19 2021 08:18 AM

THE trailer for the latest Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Disney+ from today) suggests a return to the familiar style of the movie blockbusters after the genre-twiddling experiment of WandaVision.

Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan star as the titular superheroes, who team up. For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they’ll like.

Kaley Cuoco kicks her Big Bang Theory image into touch for The Flight Attendant (Sky 1, 9pm — all episodes on demand — and NOW TV).

She plays cabin crew member Cassie, an alcoholic party girl prone to booze-induced blackouts, who wakes up in a fancy Bangkok hotel bedroom to find her latest one-night stand dead, his throat slashed.
It’s a dazzling blend of dark comedy and pulpy thrills. Cuoco is fantastic and the surreal flashback/mind-palace scenes hint at something sadder and more poignant going on under the surface.

The Fleabag-Normal People mash-up was a highlight of RTÉ Does Comic Relief, and it turns up again in the UK Comic Relief (BBC1, 7pm and 10.45pm; BBC2, 10pm).

Also promised are a Vicar of Dibley sketch with Dawn French and real-life vicar Kate Bottley; Michael Sheen, Keira Knightley and Anna Friel in a mini-disaster movie; a Staged special (Sheen again, with David Tennant); and a performance from the cast of Back to the Future: The Musical. Holding it all together are hosts Lenny Henry, Davina McCall, Paddy McGuinness, Alesha Dixon and Tennant.
Henry pops up again in a Comic Relief-linked Later... with Jools Holland (BBC2, 10pm), choosing his favourite performances from the show’s rich archive.

Arriving 48 hours after a muted St Patrick’s Day, Irish Music Night (BBC4, from 9pm) has some well-chosen repeats. St Patrick’s Day at the BBC is an hour of archive performances featuring the usual suspects, but the real meat is a trio of fine repeated documentaries: Citizens of Boomtown: The Story of the Boomtown Rats (10pm), The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities (11.30pm) and Showbands: How Ireland Learned to Party (12.30am).

SATURDAY

GIVEN the fallout from Meghan and Harry’s sit-down with Oprah, it’s exquisite timing for The Windsors: Inside the Royal Dynasty (Channel 4, 8pm), a six-parter from CNN — which makes a change from a UK broadcaster – telling the story of the royal family and its upheavals from the 1920s to the end of World War II. It opens with the first big shock to the monarchy’s system: Edward VIII’s decision to give up the throne and marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

Assassins (Sky Documentaries, 9pm) compellingly recalls the bizarre killing of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un, at Kuala Lumpur.

His killers were two unwitting young women who smeared a deadly nerve agent in his eyes, believing they were taking part in an innocent YouTube prank.

Well-known for inserting himself into his documentaries, Nick Broomfield goes one further by turning the camera on his loving, but complicated, relationship with his father Maurice in his latest film, My Father and Me (BBC2, 9.45pm). Coming from the team that made Money Heist, Sky Rojo (Netflix, from today), pictured right, is a pulpy Spanish drama about three sex workers who have to go on the run after killing their monstrous pimp.

SUNDAY

THERE was a niggling feeling that Line of Duty (BBC1, 9pm), back with a much-anticipated sixth season, had maybe pushed its luck a tiny bit too far last time with a dying-seconds revelation that there may be more than one ‘H’ behind all that’s been going on.

But, hey, so what? It’s a cracking thriller and a little credibility-straining is allowed when everything else is so good. I’m not allowed to tell you anything, really, about this first episode, except that the new antagonist, DCI Jo Davidson (the great Kelly Macdonald), looks like she could be AC-12’s slipperiest customer since Keeley Hawes’s Lindsay Denton.

Though a drama of a very different stripe from LOD, Smother (RTĒ1, 9.30pm) has a plot that’s every bit as tangled. Very much an old-school whodunit, and none the worse for it, it has more iffy characters than an ancient typewriter.

It’s the halfway point and Carl is coming under fire as events from his past life in Denmark come to light. Val looks to Mairéad for support.

Some people will do anything for a freebie — so, it seems, will some wild animals. In the penultimate edition of Chris Packham’s Animal Einsteins (BBC2, 7pm), which looks at the animal kingdom’s greatest tricksters and fraudsters, we meet sea otters who kidnap pups and hold them to ransom for food.

Barring another postponement, Daniel Craig’s final throw of the 007 dice, No Time to Die, will be released at the end of September. In the meantime, Top Gear (BBC1, 8pm) offers a guide to how to buy a James Bond car on any budget.

Queen Elizabeth: Love, Honour and Crown (Channel 4, 9pm) is the second royal-family documentary from the broadcaster in two nights. Honestly, Channel 4 is beginning to look more like Channel 5.

The programme, a potted history of royal crises, was completed before THAT interview, so a brief reference to it has been tacked on at the end to make it feel topical.

DCI Jo Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald, on right, is the latest antagonist for DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and AC-12 in Line of Duty, returning on Sunday

Herald