Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\nRod Liddle\u2019s picksLandman![\"Billy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/124d3bbb-f22f-4c4a-b4a5-84287c7ffa6e.jpg\")
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Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris in Landman<\/p>\n
EMERSON MILLER\/PARAMOUNT+\/AP<\/p>\n
Paramount+
The most joyous of the year\u2019s box sets, an upcycling of Dallas with Billy Bob Thornton playing the laconic oil fixer Tommy Norris stamping about west Texas making enormous amounts of money from the exploitation of fossil fuels. If that wasn\u2019t enough, there\u2019s a steely Demi Moore as the company\u2019s dowager and the wonderful Michelle Randolph as Tommy\u2019s pampered, thick as mince daughter. Thrill as the derricks strike black gold! Watch it on Christmas Day and imagine Greta Thunberg screaming at the set, \u201cHow dare you!\u201d Lots of fun and a great cast.<\/p>\n
Tipping Point <\/p>\n
ITV1\/ITVX
Then bring yourself back to earth with the sudden realisation that so many of your fellow citizens are pig ignorant to a degree that would insult a pig. This mash-up of quiz show and arcade game has become famous for the unparalleled dimness of its competitors, with the presenter Ben Shephard sometimes open-mouthed with incredulity at their astonishing lack of knowledge. On a recent edition two contestants were asked to name the star in our solar system. One said \u201cthe Earth\u201d, the other said \u201cthe moon\u201d. Which 19th-century Scottish novelist wrote the Ivanhoe novels? Nope, it wasn\u2019t \u201cWilliam Shakespeare\u201d. Nor, Pat from Rotherham, is Singapore in Europe.<\/p>\n
The Fortune Hotel ![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/248db2ec-33b1-43a7-894c-ffa99fd57e8c.jpg\")
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Stephen Mangan with the contestants on The Fortune Hotel<\/p>\n
\u00a9ITV\/TUESDAY\u2019S CHILD PRODUCTION\/SI JOH<\/p>\n
ITVX
Easily the best of the year\u2019s Traitors copyists, as a bunch of disparate couples vie to double-cross each other and compete in pointless and taxing games in a paradisical hotel on Grenada. OK, the \u201cTV event of the year\u201d went to The Celebrity Traitors \u2014 but this was superior, partly because the contestants were not celebrities but a neatly curated conglomeration of oddballs, and partly because the show was presented not by Claudia Winkleman but by the rather more engaging Stephen Mangan. The joy came in watching the animosity grow and the double-crossing get more and more vicious. The Traitors, meanwhile, is back on BBC1 on New Year\u2019s Day. Meh.<\/p>\n
Storyville: Mr Nobody Against Putin <\/p>\n
iPlayer
Probably the best documentary of the year. Pavel Talankin, a teacher in the ghastly post-Soviet copper mining town of Karabash, on the edge of Siberia, secretly filmed what happened in his school after Russia invaded Ukraine. The kids and staff were bullied and dragooned into a nationalistic, perhaps fascistic, fervour and a concomitant hatred of both Ukraine and the West. Nerdy and self-deprecating, Talankin came into increasing conflict with the school authorities as they implemented the federal patriotic education policy. The show\u2019s antihero was the chief disseminator of propaganda, a lank, grey, lugubrious history teacher called Abdulmanov, who came straight from the pages of Dostoevsky. Talankin fled Russia in 2024 and now lives in the West.<\/p>\n
The Gold <\/p>\n
iPlayer
We still don\u2019t know what happened to all of the \u00a326 million worth of Brink\u2019s-Mat gold liberated from a warehouse at Heathrow in 1983. I hope someone enjoyed spending at least part of it. Awful lot of bother, really, if they didn\u2019t. But we do know that the perps were the usual suspects \u2014 largely sarf Lunnun crims such as Micky \u201cThe Nutter\u201d McAvoy and of course Kenny Noye, who allegedly helped with a bit of smelting. All nicely brought to life in the second series of this fine dramatisation.<\/p>\n
Jaws @ 50 <\/p>\n
National Geographic, Dec 30, 8pm
Runner-up for my documentary of the year. The film that grabbed hold of the world in 1975 gave its director, Steven Spielberg, a nervous breakdown and had people paddling in the sea at Clacton terrified that a great white might be waiting for them. It was a difficult trick to pull off. First there was the giant mechanical shark, which kept breaking down \u2014 no CGI, of course. Then, worse, Spielberg had to contend with an almost perpetually pissed Robert Shaw and the uniquely irritating \u2014 even when sober \u2014 Richard Dreyfuss. Top-drawer interviews, including a gently reflective Spielberg, brought 1975 back to life.<\/p>\n
Channel of the year \u2014 Film4<\/p>\n
It seems pointless having a TV channel devoted entirely to films, seeing as almost all movies are available to us these days from Netflix, Prime Video and beyond. But whoever chooses the films for Channel Four has great taste and imagination, and the pleasure comes in watching films you might not have heard of, or hadn\u2019t considered watching. The best viewing time is a Sunday afternoon. That\u2019s when I caught Kind Hearts and Coronets plus a host of old Ealing comedies. Keep \u2019em coming. <\/p>\n
What are your favourite shows of the year? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NetflixA cast of grotesques and monsters, each with their own grisly peccadilloes and chilling proclivities: spending time with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-328432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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