On paper, a series about Harvey Weinstein’s crimes from one of the journalists who broke the story to the world sounds like a winner.
Catch & Kill: The Podcast Tapes (Sky Documentaries) shows the lengths that New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow went to in exposing the Hollywood producer as the predator he is – and all the roadblocks he experienced along the way.
But if you’ve been following the horrifying case since it was broken by Farrow and the New York Times four years ago, this documentary feels less revelatory than you might expect (or it wants you to think).
That’s particularly true if you’ve listened to Farrow’s podcast that much of this six-part series is based on.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Catch & Kill’s audio-only beginnings prove to be a little detrimental to the viewing experience.
We’ve been conditioned as viewers to expect true crime documentaries to be a string of talking heads on camera, but Catch & Kill often has to rely on audio over photographs and arty drone shots of New York to make what’s being said visually interesting.
Of course, the evidence and testimony Farrow meticulously collected IS interesting – I just wish this HBO series didn’t feel quite so much like a spin-off (or should that be cash-in?) of his book and podcast.
As a journalist, I found the nuts and bolts of how the New Yorker investigation was put together fascinating and the episode that described how Farrow found himself under surveillance from spies sent by Harvey’s lawyers was a chilling example of the lengths the powerful can go to quash a story, but overall the series didn’t feel like it earned its existence.
The story of Farrow and Weinstein has already been told in a way that’s much better – in podcast and book form.
So if you’re interested in the full story, those are the best places to consume it.
TV review: Bickering bloodsuckers
The bickering bloodsuckers of What We Do In The Shadows (BBC2) returned for a third series and it’s still as funny and, dare I say it, heartwarming as normal.
Heartwarming is a strange way to describe a show that frequently involves blood spurting across the screen, but there’s definitely a bond between the Staten Island vampires and the way they band together.
Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja and Colin Robinson have been put in charge of the Vampiric Council and their problems aren’t just limited to issues affecting the undead.
One of my favourite exchanges was when they debated changing the font of the council’s website. “I mean, we could do Franklin Gothic,” said Nadja, “but it’s a bit on the nose.”
Clean sweep
If you have a spare room, garage or loft piled high with stuff you haven’t looked at in two decades, Sort Your Life Out With Stacey Solomon (BBC1) might just give you the nudge to get it all in order.
The concept of the show is that Stacey and her crack team of reorganisers empty a family’s home of its contents then lay it all out on the floor of a warehouse to show them how little of it is actually needed in their lives.
This is, of course, at the extreme end of clutter gathering, but the storage advice and the philosophical lessons around throwing stuff out are things we can all learn from and put into action.
Just don’t ask me to throw out my collection of VHS tapes.
Outsiders deserves a second series
Although I was a bit sniffy about how similar early episodes of Outsiders (Dave) were to Taskmaster, I hope it gets another series because it has grown into something rather wonderful.
My enjoyment was boosted when I came to realise that the entertainment of seeing the comedians doing the outdoorsy tasks is actually secondary to simply watching them hang out together.
Film of the week: The Night House, Disney+
The Night House is one of those scary movies that drip feeds the audience information for much of the running time before delivering a full-on horror climax.
The film opens with high school teacher Beth (Rebecca Hall) returning to her lakeside home after the suicide of husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) and discovering that something lurks in the shadows.
What that is takes most of the film to figure out, but despite the slow-burn nature of the narrative, The Night House is rarely dull.
Hall anchors the film with a raw performance in which her character’s grief and scepticism slowly give way to a horrifying realisation that the man she loved may have been hiding a dark secret.
David Bruckner’s sinister film forgoes gore in favour of jump scares, sound design and creepy figures lurking just at the edge of frame.