In 2014, notorious publicist Max Clifford was jailed for eight years
for indecent assault. This documentary utilises 30 hours of previously
unheard audio recordings of Clifford, alongside interviews with some of
his victims, to shed light on his crimes.
Monday 1 March, 9pm, Channel 4
Man in Room 301
This tense Finnish thriller focuses on the Kurtti family, whose lives
are upended after their two-year-old son is killed. Twelve years later,
during a family holiday, a man is spotted who looks like their son’s
killer, unlocking a chain of events that leads back to their dark past.
Saturday 27 February, 9pm, BBC Four
Set
in a pupil referral unit, this comedy pilot follows four 15-year-olds –
Halil, Hanna, Jaeden and Belle – who have been excluded from their
previous mainstream schools and now find themselves thrown together to
get through year 10. Firstly, though, they set about wreaking havoc on
their unsuspecting teacher’s day by not getting along.
Tuesday 2 March, BBC Three
McDonald & Dodds
Tala Gouveia and Jason Watkins return as the titular mismatched
detective duo in the second series of this Bath-based drama. The three
episodes will be bolstered by a host of guest stars including Rupert
Graves, Martin Kemp, Patsy Kensit and Rob Brydon.
Sunday 28 February, 8pm, ITV
Attenborough’s Life in Colour
Living legend David Attenborough presents this three-part series
exploring the myriad vital ways animals use colour. Utilising high-tech
cameras built specifically for the show, it focuses mainly on Australian
wildlife and shows a world so far unseen by the human eye.
Sunday 28 February, 7pm, BBC One
Deutschland 89
The third and final season of the hit German-language drama moves its
focus to 1989 and the fall of the Berlin wall. Following the so-called
“end of history”, Jonas Nay’s former East German intelligence officer
Martin Rauch is suddenly forced to return to work as an undercover
agent.
Friday 5 March, 9pm, More4
DNA Family Secrets
Stacey
Dooley helps a group of people answer burning questions about their
identities in this new series. Whether it’s a man who wants to know who
his biological father is or a woman keen to understand her ethnicity,
the results are in their DNA.
Tuesday 2 March, 9pm, BBC Two
MasterChef
Forty amateur cooks are back in the MasterChef kitchen, hoping to
impress judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode with their gastronomic
skills in the latest series of this reality staple. For week one, the
hopefuls face critic Grace Dent and previous winners.
Monday 1 March, 9pm, BBC One
The Terror
Ridley Scott serves as executive producer on this horror drama, a
fictionalised account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to
the Arctic. Frozen and isolated, and with dwindling supplies, the Royal
Navy crew quickly struggle not only with the elements, but with each
other. Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies and Ciarán Hinds star.
Wednesday 3 March, 9pm, BBC Two
Podcasts
The Sink: A Sleep Aid
This comedy-horror podcast from writer Natasha Hodgson promises to
recreate dream scenarios – with the help of voice actors including Alice
Lowe and David Elms – in order to help you drift off into the land of
nod. The result is an intriguing mix of audio surrealism, ambient sound
design and scripted narrative, soothing listeners when silence is not
enough.
All episodes available, BBC Sounds
Spectacle: An Unscripted History of Reality TV
Mariah
Smith hosts this fascinating podcast dissecting how the past three
decades of reality TV have come to shape and inform our culture, from
The Real World to Survivor. Smith interviews participants and critics to
find out why the television genre has become such a staple.
Weekly, widely available
The latest addition to the Guardian’s podcasts comes in the form of a
series unpicking the songs and artists behind historical turning points
for cities across the world. Topics already covered have included the
campaign to oust a Panamanian dictator with Rick Astley’s music and
Shostakovich’s 
DJ Fabio Luis, DJ and promoter Shenin Amara, and photographer Dayran
host this “unscripted and unvarnished” new podcast exploring the culture
around London’s house music scene. Episode one examines the impact of
Covid-19 on nightlife, taking a look at the rise of socially distanced
events, and tackles the issue of discrimination in clubs.
Fortnightly, Spotify
Poppy Hillstead Has Entered the Chat
As literature begins to articulate our frantic existence online, so
do podcasts. Or at least this one does: it sees comic Poppy Hillstead
visiting niche chat rooms – VIP Vampires, the Magic Circle – then
getting her famous friends, including Rich Fulcher and Kim Noble, to
re-enact those interactions.
Weekly, widely available
Film
The United States vs Billie Holiday (15)
(Lee Daniels) 130 mins
From
the late 1940s onwards, singer Holiday faced harassment from the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, ostensibly due to her heroin habit but
really because she kept performing her brilliant, incendiary song
Strange Fruit. This absorbing biopic, starring a remarkable Andra Day,
tracks her travails as a black federal agent (Trevante Rhodes) finds his
loyalties tested.
Sky Cinema
IWOW: I Walk on Water (15)
(Khalik Allah) 199 mins
Film-maker Allah revisits the
East Harlem of his 2015 doc Field Niggas for an extended,
impressionistic profile of the denizens of its troubled streets. Shot at
night on a handheld camera, it focuses mostly on homeless addict
Frenchie, but also touches on Allah’s life and vocation.
On digital
The Stylist (TBC)
(Jill Gevargizian) 105 mins
How do you make friends when
you’re a serial killer who scalps their victims for trophies? That’s the
dilemma facing Najarra Townsend’s socially awkward hairdresser Claire
in this sly horror cum indie character study; a job for Olivia (Brea
Grant), who’s getting married, offers her a path out of her loneliness.
Arrow, out Monday 1 March
Moxie (TBC)
(Amy Poehler) 111 mins
Shy 16-year-old Vivian (Hadley
Robinson) is inspired by her mother (Poehler) to take on the toxic
sexist culture at her high school in this young adult drama. She and her
friends start an anonymous magazine exposing the situation and stir up a
hornets’ nest.
Netflix, out Wednesday 3 March
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry (15)
(RJ Cutler) 140 mins
A closeup doc about the talented
teenage pop star/voice of a generation. It bags a lot of quality time
with her and her family as she records her first album and comes to
terms with skyscraping levels of fame.
Apple TV+
Frantz
French genre playboy François Ozon isn’t known for black-and-white period dramas, but this 2016 film is a sombre, finely tuned treasure. Paula Beer plays young German Anna, whose fiance, Frantz, has died in the first world war. When French soldier Adrien (Pierre Niney) turns up claiming to have been the dead man’s friend, Anna is drawn to him. The truth is revealed in epiphanies of colour.
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