King & Conqueror, the BBC’s new series telling “the epic story of 1066 and the brutal battle for a kingdom”, began on BBC One on Sunday, 24 August, 2025. The historian Annie Whitehead reviews the first episode and finds it “a wasted opportunity to tackle the subject”. For years, Anglo-Saxon history languished in the film […]
TV review: The Mirror and the Light
Tracy Borman is a historian and author. She’s also the biographer of Thomas Cromwell, the central figure in the BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light. We’re delighted that she’s reviewed the first programme in the series for us (and relieved that she found it lived up to her expectations). I am […]
Review: Mary & George
Who better than a novelist who’s also a historian and the latest biographer of Charles I to review Mary & George, the TV drama based on the life of George, Duke of Buckingham, favourite of James VI and I? We asked Mark Turnbull to watch the series. Many of us ask why the Stuarts are […]
TV review: Lessons in Chemistry
How well does bestselling historical fiction transfer to the TV screen? James Burge reviews Apple TV’s adaptation of Lessons in Chemistry and finds it “well-crafted, effective and intelligent”. Films and novels are very different things. Broadly speaking, a novel consists of dialogue, descriptions of action and the inner world of characters, and narration. When it […]
TV review: I, Claudius
The historian and novelist LJ Trafford, who knows the seedier, scurrilous side of Roman history as well as anyone does, reviews the BBC’s repeat of the 1976 series I, Claudius and finds that it’s still “brilliant”. There’s this thing that happens whenever movies and TV get their hands on ancient Rome: they just can’t resist […]
Review: The Last Kingdom – Seven Kings Must Die
Essie Fox reviews the last TV screen appearance of Uhtred of Bebbanburg in Seven Kings Must Die, the final episode of the long-running The Last Kingdom series. She finds much to admire. Seven Kings Must Die is the one-off Netflix film that finally concludes the historical TV series, The Last Kingdom. These enthralling screen adaptions […]
TV review: The Windermere Children
The Windermere Children (BBC 2, 27 January, 2020) follows the true story of a group of children, recently freed from concentration camps who, in 1945, were brought to Windermere for four months of rehabilitation under the auspices of child psychologist Oscar Friedmann (Thomas Kretschmann) and philanthropist Leonard Montefiore (Tim McInnerny). Made to be transmitted on […]
TV review: The Crown, season 3
The timing couldn’t be better. The Crown(season 3)returns to TV screens in a week when the Royal Family is back in the headlines and the role of its members is once again being questioned. And with Olivia Colman in the title role, playing a very different kind of queen from the one she gave us […]