This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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As this glorious British summer keeps us indoors, here’s a reminder of some of the shows you might have missed.

BBC iPlayer

Spy/Master

Now that Romania is a prospering member of both the European Union and NATO, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that for more than thirty years it was ruled by two of history’s most malevolent Communist dictators: Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu.

Set in the late 1970s, Spy/Master is loosely based on the defection of their real-life intelligence chief: Ion Mihai Pacepa. This smart, fast-paced Cold War thriller unfolds over six episodes as their turncoat adviser seeks sanctuary for himself and his family in the West. Meanwhile the enraged Ceausescus plot their revenge.

There’s plenty of intrigue, action and espionage tradecraft as the CIA, the Stasi, the KGB and Romanian counter-intelligence all weave in and out of the storyline. Top marks to the costume and set designers for the fantabulous 1970s outfits and hairstyles.

Still available for those who missed them on release:

The best police procedurals unpeel the place where the drama unfolds. Blue Lights and Rebus show the dark sides of Belfast and Edinburgh — whilst giving centre stage to notably strong casts of characters.

Channel 4 Walter Presents

The Silence

A dark and sometimes disturbing political thriller set in present-day Osijek, Croatia and Kyiv from the same team that produced The Paper and Four Strangers. The independence wars of the early 1990s still cast a long shadow in this six-part drama about human trafficking.

A mysterious EU investigator with vast powers, a mother with a terrible secret, and a dogged reporter — all determined to expose the people-traffickers — reinforce a lively cast. Sections of Croatia’s fictional political elite are once again portrayed as astonishingly corrupt … and this time prepared to sanction and even take part in brutal sexual violence.

Still available:

A determined Finnish female detective is on the trail of a sinister brotherhood organising human-hunts in Russia in Arctic Circle, whilst The Drought unfolds in the parched Spanish borderlands. There an abandoned, formerly flooded village is giving up its secrets.

Netflix

Gangs of Galicia

Ana Lago is a high-flying lawyer in Madrid set to visit her father Jorge in Cambado on the Atlantic Coast when he is shot dead. The two were close, but Ana soon realises that she barely knew him. His death opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, such as the two mysterious women to whom he left money in his will.

Jorge, it turns out, was in witness protection after testifying against Jose Padin, head of a dynasty of drug dealers, now in prison. Ana, determined to seek revenge, seeks out his son Daniel Padin and quickly ingratiates herself with him, whilst keeping her real plan secret.

But the Spanish sun, sea, wine and lazy dinners by the beach soon work their magic. How long can her resolve hold as their mutual attraction becomes obvious? A clever drama, inspired in part by real life events, that also makes the most of the lush seaside scenery.

Still available:

The British director Guy Ritchie once again shakes up his favourite mix of gangsters and aristocrats in The Gentlemen whilst Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War recounts the events that made our modern world.

Amazon Prime/Paramount

A Gentleman in Moscow

Ewan McGregor gives one of the performances of his career as Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat sentenced to life imprisonment in Moscow’s once luxurious Metropol Hotel.

It’s the early 1920s, a few years after the Bolshevik coup, and Rostov has lost his wealth and holdings. He now shivers in a sparse attic room. But unlike many of his upper-class peers, he is at least alive.

Board and lodging are free. He can move around inside the building at will but will be shot if he steps outside. The lush, finely-detailed period drama is based on Amor Towles’s eponymous, bestselling novel. The pace can be slow, but the storyline is always rewarding as Rostov gets entangled with his fellow guests — at ever greater risk.

He takes a lover and becomes very attached to Nina, an engaging nine-year-old girl. Some may see Rostov’s incarceration at the Metropol as a symbol of Russia itself under Communism: a sealed-off, dangerous, often brutal world — but one where friendship and love can still provide succour. Even the Bolsheviks cannot imprison the human heart.

Still available:

Red Queen races around Madrid, where Antonia Scott, a super-solver with an IQ of 242, is partnered with an overweight, gay Basque policeman. The unlikely partners are on the trail of a serial killer targeting the children of Spain’s richest families.

Apple TV+

Presumed Innocent

The first television dramatisation of the bestselling late-1980s legal thriller by Scott Turow sees Rusty Sabich, a Chicago prosecutor, suspected of the murder of his colleague Carolyn Polhemus. Sabich is married but he and Polhemus were having a very torrid affair. Did he kill her to get rid of her?

The eight-part series, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, steadily builds the tension as Sabich sees the legal system that he has served for so long turn on him. For many, he is presumed guilty. However, Polhemus is too often shown as a victim, dead, bloodied and tied up — just another female corpse to get the story started.

Still available:

The New Look and Masters of the Air, two enthralling Second World War period dramas set in the haute couture salons of Nazi-occupied Paris and an American airbase in rural England. The battle scenes as the bombers punch their way through skies full of flak and fighter planes are spectacular.