What to watch on TV this week: Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Toast of London, The Man In The High Castle

Toby Earle picks the best of this week's TV and streaming shows
Jessica Jones: Marvel's new Netflix drama deserves a proper binge-watch
Myles Aronowitz/Netflix
Toby Earle18 November 2015

Not sure what to watch on the box this week? Toby Earle has picked the best of what this week has to offer, with huge new dramas from rival streaming services Netflix and Amazon.

The former is Jessica Jones, a refreshing break from Marvel shininess, while Amazon's latest offering is a Ridley Scott-backed adaptation of Philip K Dick's alternative history The Man In The High Castle.

Elsewhere, watch Christopher Eccleston in the acclaimed Let Him Have It, and watch Steven Toast swig wine with Lorraine when Toast of London returns.

Toast of London, Channel 4, Wednesday, 10.30pm

There’s an actor, an actor of integrity, exalted and raised aloft by the muses, his art the theatrical ambrosia which surges through his arteries in haste, seeking the next divine project to shine a truth onto our existence.

But that’s enough about Shia LaBoeuf allowing us to watch a livestream of Shia LaBoeuf watching all of Shia LaBoeuf’s films, including the seminal Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I want to talk about a man who’s the hottest thing since a slice of freshly-toaster-popped warm bread: Toast. Steven Toast. Toast of London.

The caramel-throated thespian, the best in the country at acting in high winds, returns in the third series of the Bafta-winning comedy Toast of London. In this run Toast is invited to the Royal Variety Performance and also meets Jon Hamm off Mad Men, although his days of hearing Clem Fandango may be numbered as a new and cheaper voiceover artist muscles in on his work. Delirious, majestic oafery, where the joy drawn from the performances ensure repeat viewings.

Let Him Have It, London Live, Thursday, 10pm

Let Him Have It. Four words which hung over the British legal system for 45 years, four words that were used to tell the story of Derek Bentley. Christopher Eccleston plays Bentley in this dramatization of the events which led to his execution for murder, Eccleston his usual superb self as a man with learning disabilities who falls in with young tearaway Christopher Craig and is persuaded to aid Craig in robbing a warehouse in Croydon.

Surrounded by police, it was on the rooftop of the building where Bentley was said to have uttered the four words while in the custody of DS Frederick Fairfax, Craig shooting the officer before fleeing and then killing PC Sidney Miles with a shot to the head. At Bentley’s trial those four ambiguous words were said to have been an incitement to Craig, who was too young to be given the death penalty, and Bentley was sentenced to death.

Eccleston’s portrayal of bewilderment mirrored that of those who campaigned on his behalf, and seven years after this film was released Bentley had received both a posthumous pardon and had his murder conviction quashed. The one aspect of the film which is now a fiction is its title - those four words, ones which sent Bentley to death row, were later found to have been fabricated by police officers.

Amazon Prime Video exclusives you need to watch

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Jessica Jones, Netflix, all episodes on Friday

Do you feel listless or bored? Do your back teeth feel nauseous? Does the sight of brightly coloured capes give your eyes a migraine? Do your shoulders slump to your knees when you witness a man or woman flying unaided or in an iron suit? Do one or all of these sensations strike when you hear a new film or TV show about superheroes is imminent?

If so, then this condition cannot be rectified, as any or all of those mean you’re perfectly healthy and rightly tired of the wearying exposure to characters glued to cinema and TV screens, pop culture barnacles secreting superglue. Although Superglue is one superhero which has yet to have its own film or TV show.

And now I say, ‘But’. But, Jessica Jones, the new Marvel series which belches into your Netflix this Friday, is one which deserves a serious binge because this places a superhero into a very adult and unsettling environment, far from the gleam of Thor’s shampoo advert hair.

Jessica Jones is a failed superhero, who drinks more whisky in the first episode than the entire cast of Netflix’s Daredevil downed in a series, her time now spent working as a private eye and drinking more whisky. What is slowly revealed is her shattered life was caused by Kilgrave, a man with the power to compel minds to his own ends, his whims very much making this series one that deals with adult situations. Krysten Ritter is excellent as Jones, whose lonely life collapses when Kilgrave re-surfaces, and David Tennant’s villain is vicious and spiteful, pulling lives apart like a child yanking the legs off a fly.

The Man in the High Castle, Amazon Instant Video, all episodes on Friday

The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics alludes to the existence of every possible alternative version of historical and future events exist. Good news for Alien Uncovered off The X Factor, then, who at least made it to the second week.

Philip K Dick concocted a horrifying alternative history in 1962 which presented a globe under the yoke of a mentally syphilitic Nazi regime, Europe subjugated, Africa blasted, and the USA split between Germany and Imperial Japan.

The grotesque chance the Nazis and Axis powers won World War II is realised to chilling effect in this adaptation from Frank ‘The X Files’ Spotnitz through tiny attention to detail; Swastikas huddle around the population of a defeated America, from blaring down from Times Square to dotting the centre of public payphones. A drive through the countryside draws large chimneys into view, industrial murder seeping into the landscape.

This adaptation follows multiple character strands across the continent, with Rufus Sewell’s SS Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith a parody of the All-American Dad, dispensing Nazi-approved fatherly ideology over breakfast to his son. What resistance exists clings onto mysterious footage of Allied victory called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, footage which draws Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) and Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) together on the Imperial Japanese west coast of the USA.

You’ll watch Toast afterwards, rather than this be the last thing you see before closing your eyes.

Follow Toby Earle on Twitter: @TobyOnTV

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