Pat Stacey’s weekend TV preview: Post-Game of Thrones fantasy glut continues

Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov and Ben Barnes as The Darkling in new fantasy series Shadow and Bone. Photo: David Appleby/Netflix

Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov and Ben Barnes as The Darkling in new fantasy series Shadow and Bone. Photo: David Appleby/Netflix

Katie Taylor

Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov and Ben Barnes as The Darkling in new fantasy series Shadow and Bone. Photo: David Appleby/Netflix

April 23 2021 07:50 AM

ONE legacy of Game of Thrones, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, is how it made the previously minority genre of fantasy popular, leading to a glut of epic sagas based on a fat novel series with a fanatical readership.

Tonight

Whether you consider this a good thing is a matter of taste, but the latest is Shadow and Bone (Netflix), based on novels by American writer Leigh Bardugo. Don’t expect GOT levels of sex and violence, though, because we’re in young-adult territory here.

Jessie Mei Li plays Alina Starkov, a teenage orphan and cartographer in a Russia-inspired land of 100 years ago. She unexpectedly harnesses a power she never knew she possessed, which sees her joining an elite, magical army known as the Grisha and battling evil oppressors.

Meanwhile, back here in reality, The Shelter: SOS (RTÉ 1, 8.30pm) is a lovely new series focusing on the work of the DSPCA, Ireland’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity.

Tonight, kennel carers Shane and Tanya face a tough time as a pair of terriers with bad cases of mange are dropped off at the shelter, while vet Elise performs life-altering eye surgery on an abandoned kitten. Aw!

There’s a rather larger beast on The Late Late Show (RTÉ 1, 9.35pm), where Tom Jones performs the Bob Dylan classic One More Cup of Coffee.

An eclectic line-up of guests includes Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill; stalking victims Una Ring and Eve McDowell, who are campaigning to have stalking made a specific offence; Jamie Wall, a promising young GAA star whose life was changed by paralysis; and Irish TikTok sensations Tolu Ibikunle, Susan Ilesanmi and Okefe Afe.

The Beatles weren’t the only ones experimenting in 1967, the year Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. The Who were doing it too. The first in a new series of the excellent Classic Albums (Sky Arts, 9pm) dives deep into the band’s third studio album, The Who Sell Out, which was framed as a pirate radio station broadcast, complete with fake adverts and public service announcements. The album is re-released in a super deluxe edition today.

The final episode of Deutschland 89 (More4, 9pm) brings the cracking Cold War espionage trilogy to a close. Things look bleak for Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay). He’s hanging in chains from the ceiling of a CIA black site, while agency man Hector Valdez (Raul Casso) accuses him of being involved in the plot to kill Helmut Kohl.

Tomorrow

THE excellent Lennox Lewis: The Untold Story (Sky Documentaries, 9pm) is an overdue look at a terrific and often underappreciated heavyweight champion, who always comes across as a thoroughly nice man — a comparative rarity in the brutal fight game. And unlike many before him, he knew the right time to retire, and on his own terms.

Three music icons whose lives were cut tragically short are remembered tonight. Originally scheduled for April 10, Tupac Shakur: A Life in Ten Pictures (BBC2 NI, 9.30pm; other regions, 9pm) looks at a star whose blingy bad-boy image obscured his youthful maturity and socially conscious roots.

New documentary Roy Orbison: Mystery Girl Unravelled (Sky Arts, 9pm) looks at the making of the great singer-songwriter’s final album, released just a month before his death from a heart attack at 52.

Prince: A Purple Reign (BBC4, 11.55pm), first shown in 2011, is a tight hour that focuses mainly on Prince’s extraordinary run of creativity in the mid-1980s. One contributor recalls how he came up with the dazzling Let’s Go Crazy overnight.

Sunday

HAVING predicted in an earlier column what the outcome of last Sunday’s cliffhanger Mexican stand-off in Line of Duty (BBC1, 9pm) would be, I’m already beginning to think I guessed wrong. Let’s just say the appearance of the words “tragic events” in one online programme note for this penultimate episode doesn’t bode well. What we do know is that the clock is ticking on Ted’s career — and his last chance to identify the rotten apples at the very top of the pile.

In the conclusion of the enjoyable two-parter Guy Martin: Battle of Britain (Channel 4, 9pm), the presenter discovers life as a World War II RAF fighter pilot was hairier than his trademark sideburns. Among the skills he has to master are dogfighting in a Hawker Hurricane at 200mph, flying upside down and knocking out the enemy with just 16 seconds’ worth of ammunition.

One of the very few good things to arise from the pandemic has been the increase in live theatre productions being shown on TV. Lights Up: The Winter’s Tale (BBC4, 7pm) is a new production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, intriguingly set between the years of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 and the moon landing in 1969.

Katie Taylor

Reeling in the Years (RTÉ 1, 8.30pm) reaches 2012, whose good points included Katie Taylor winning gold at the London Olympics and Barack Obama winning a second term in office. On the downside... bloody Nathan bloody Carter and his bloody Wagon Wheel!

If you lack either the stamina or the necessary subscription package for the 93rd Academy Awards (Sky Cinema Oscars, 12.30am), coming live from several venues, the highlights are on RTÉ2 and Sky One on Monday night. Check your listings for times.