The final part of a trilogy of documentaries about the TV presenter’s husband’s battle with Covid is honest, sweet and unsentimental. It’s a beautiful testament to the miracle of love

There are several miracles on show in Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story, the final part of what has become a trilogy of documentaries since the TV presenter’s husband, former Labour adviser Derek Draper, was felled by the catastrophic consequences of Covid four years ago.

The first is the absolute resistance by the makers of any temptation to wallow in the sadness. Like Garraway herself, all the films have been brisk, to the point, honest and deeply loving. This last part, despite covering the final year of Draper’s life, is as short, punchy and sweet as all the others.

Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed spent four years following the circus created by the rightwing TV host after he claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting never happened

There is a statistic dropped into the middle of the new HBO documentary about Alex Jones and his conspiracy-laden campaign to deny the Sandy Hook school massacre that is so startling it changes the complexion of the film.

It’s tempting to see the blustering alt-right InfoWars host as little more than a charlatan selling snake oil conspiracies to the fringes of American society. But then The Truth vs Alex Jones tells us that one in four Americans believes Jones’s claim that the 2012 murder of 20 small children and six staff at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, never happened.

Ade Adepitan makes a brave attempt to understand South African racial separatists; GoT’s creators deliver a mind-blowing sci-fi epic; Kristen Wiig tries to infiltrate a Palm Beach elite; and vaping goes under the microscope

Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure Channel 4 | channel4.com
3 Body Problem Netflix
Palm Royale Apple TV+
Jordan North: The Truth About Vaping (BBC Three) | iPlayer

Where to start with the Channel 4 documentary Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure? It’s one of the tensest you are likely to see all year. British Paralympian Ade Adepitan is the first black person to stay (for a week) in the South African whites-only Afrikaner town of Orania . In a global climate of attacks on multiculturalism, Adepitan asks if “racial separatism can ever be justified”.

This documentary attempts to grill Charles Sobhraj – whose crimes were fictionalised in BBC drama The Serpent – but he’s as maddeningly evasive as a politician. Luckily, its research segments are highly compelling

If you missed the numerous books, articles and documentaries about him, and the fictionalised version seen in the BBC drama The Serpent in 2021: Charles Sobhraj was convicted of killing two people, but is thought to have killed many more during a spree in the 1970s. He befriended naive tourists who were travelling on the “hippy trail” in south Asia, before drugging them and stealing their passports and money.

Sobhraj admits the drugging and robbing; that he would often then kill his victims is something he now denies, although he did confess it when interviewed by Richard Neville for a biography (co-authored with Julie Clarke) that became a worldwide bestseller in 1979. Sobhraj has never been tried in Thailand, where many of his alleged killings took place, but has served time for murder in India and Nepal.

The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer aired on Channel 4 and is available online

Ade Adepitan is a charming presenter, but his ‘chilled-out’ approach to entering a ‘whites-only’ South African town is utterly feeble. At points, his passivity is borderline offensive

Not every attempt at documenting real events ends up fulfilling its intended purpose. Capturing the Friedmans started as a sweet tale about clowns and ended up lamenting harrowing crimes. Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster was planned to be a couple of infomercials, not a nuanced portrait of the poisonous effects of fame. Tom Cruise went on Oprah to chat on the sofa and discuss his love for Katie Holmes in a totally normal way.

In the case of Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure, Ade Adepitan’s attempt to see if “racial separatism can ever be justified” becomes a cautionary tale for black people who think they can one-of-the-good-ones themselves out of white supremacy.

The Up documentaries, voted the most influential TV show of the past 50 years, shone a unique light on our national character

When a Yorkshire-born scientist I’d never met died last year , I grieved as though I knew him, which I did in a way. Nick Hitchon had been part of my life since he appeared on television aged six, saying he wanted to learn about the moon.

Nick made his TV debut in 1964 but I didn’t see it until the early 1980s, when my east London comprehensive school showed us the first two episodes of Seven Up!, a television series that has charted 14 British lives every seven years since. It emerged as the clear winner of a Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG) poll of the most influential British TV programmes over the past 50 years. Nick last appeared on 63 Up in 2019, talking as perceptively as ever about his throat cancer and his life.

Jane Martinson is a member of BPG, whose 50th annual awards event takes place on Thursday 21 March

Programme that follows the lives of 14 children at seven-year intervals tops Broadcasting Press Guild’s 50th anniversary chart

The groundbreaking Up documentary series has been voted the programme that changed television the most over the past 50 years in a poll of the country’s leading TV writers.

The series, which follows a group of children from different social backgrounds and documents their progress every seven years, topped a list of the the most influential shows from the last five decades compiled by the Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG).

Julianne Moore revels in an X-rated period romp, Jennifer Arcuri enlivens a predictable Boris Johnson profile, and Guy Ritchie’s eight-part drama resorts to stereotypes

Mary & George ( Sky Atlantic / Now )
The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson (Channel 4) | channel4.com
The Gentlemen ( Netflix )
Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice (BBC One) | iPlayer

I must caution delicately minded viewers of Sky Atlantic’s new seven-part breeches ripper Mary & George to have some smelling salts at the ready: it’s nothing if not spicy. Created by DC Moore ( Temple , Killing Eve ) and based on Benjamin Woolley’s book The King’s Assassin , it’s inspired by the real-life story of Mary Villiers ( Julianne Moore , with a pristine English accent). A lowborn, steely-eyed adventuress who ascends via wealthy husbands (the first, played by Simon Russell Beale, expires within minutes), Mary turns 16th and 17th-century social climbing into a deadly art form. “If I were a man and I looked like you, I’d rule the fucking planet,” the anti-matriarch hisses at her beautiful second son, George (Nicholas Galitzine). Her scheme: to pimp him out to James I of England/James VI of Scotland (Tony Curran), who has a yen for “well-hung boys”.

The story of a journalist’s mysterious death while investigating a shadowy conspiracy has become the subject of a twisty new series

“Danny is a romantic ideal of what a writer or journalist is,” says film director Zachary Treitz . “In the Hemingway mould.”

He is describing Danny Casolaro , adventurer, journalist, poet, novelist and charmer. More than 30 years ago, in room 517 at the distinctly prosaic Sheraton hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, Casolaro was found dead in a bathtub. The 44-year-old’s wrists had a dozen slash wounds, deep enough to sever the tendons. There was blood all over the room.