Benji Wilson

London

Journalist and Critic at Freelance

journalist and critic | https://t.co/28xTMYfxFX

Articles

See a whole new side of the 'fascist' Mitford sisters in this Outrageous TV drama

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

The title says it all: a TV drama about the Mitford sisters - based on Mary Lovell's definitive biography of the 1930s aristocratic brood - Outrageous is exactly that, the ne plus ultra of frothing family sagas that just happens to be true. With a cast including Bessie Carter, Joanna Vanderham, Anna Chancellor and James Purefoy, it's a tale of six siblings who, between them, turned interwar societal rebellion and scandal-mongering into a fine art.
Is it really suitable to televise this heartbreaking moment?

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

A typically emotional journey of highs and hard-to-watch heartbreak kicked off a seventh series of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace (ITV1), which set Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell on the identity trail of two more foundlings. One, Simon Prothero, was left in an outside toilet block in Neath. The other, Lisa Dyke, was found in a car park in another child's pram outside a health clinic. They came to the LLF team to find out what happened.
Suspicion, review: Uma Thurman and co manage to impress in this wholly unoriginal kidnap drama

1 week ago | aol.co.uk | Benji Wilson

It was nearly two years between Apple TV+ announcing that they were remaking the excellent Israeli drama False Flag as Suspicion (ITVX), and it airing on the service in 2021. Now it’s getting another run-out, this time on ITVX, but you can see why there had been such a long delay: Apple’s version is predicated on jetsetting.
A Nazi rebranded as a Space Race hero

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

Von Braun himself, with his Aryan visage and bizarre helium voice, knew that he was telegenic before the term had even been invented. He cleverly utilised television, including through a Disney family programme called Man and the Moon; reputation veneering was one of his greatest achievements. But in focusing on the WVB story the film also undermines its own footing. The early voiceover promises newly declassified documents and exclusive footage, but by part four it's not clear what here is new.
‘I was 100 per cent the guy’: Jim Sturgess on what makes the perfect mixtape

2 weeks ago | smh.com.au | Benji Wilson

By Benji Wilson June 12, 2025 — 5.30am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Jim Sturgess didn’t have to look very far to find his character in Binge’s new drama Mix Tape. “That was me in at 17,” he says of Daniel O’Toole, a teenager in Sheffield, England in the 1980s who falls in love with music and a girl at the same time.
Day of the Jackal: Why Eddie Redmayne Couldn't Resist His Return to TV

3 weeks ago | televisionacademy.com | Benji Wilson

In Frederick Forsyth’s classic thriller, The Day of the Jackal, the titular “Jackal” is a master of disguise. So when it came to casting Peacock’s TV adaptation, the first requirement was a lead actor who could transform . “We all knew that Eddie Redmayne was a fantastically talented, ferociously intelligent actor who had chameleon-like qualities,” says director Brian Kirk (Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones).
no fizz, no excitement and decidedly non-vintage

4 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

Both Louis and Daisy's lives back home needed fixing - he is an overworked lawyer who was about to split up with his wife and lose his child if he didn't get his act together. She was a Sydney socialite reliant on handouts from the now dead stepfather to sustain her Jimmy Choo habit. Wine and grapes and careful husbandry are used as an overarching metaphor for them both slowing down and paying attention to the things that matter.
asks the question, 'What would you have done?'

4 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

The title to Channel 4's wartime documentary is Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation but it could just have well have been, Britain Under the Nazis: What Would You Have Done? When the Nazis occupied the Channel Islands during the Second World War, the 94,000 islanders who remained were left with some stark options: resist, collaborate or plough some middle furrow. In the round, these two, excellent hour-long films showed how the ramifications of those choices echo to this day.
Netflix's Edinburgh-set answer to Slow Horses

1 month ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

In all of the above, therefore, Dept. Q offers little that's new, but it has two things in its favour. Firstly, I'm still not sure how many people have seen Slow Horses, because it's on Apple TV+ and no one knows how many people watch that. There's every chance that Carl Morck and his team of ne'er-do-wells fighting evil, as well as a system that has cast them aside, will seem like the best idea ever committed to telly. Secondly, and more importantly, Dept. Q is very well done.
Timothy Spall's witty sleuth proves a rival for Ludwig

1 month ago | telegraph.co.uk | Benji Wilson

The warning signs are all there - jaunty pizzicato strings, delightful rural setting, a quirky, cranky detective paired off with a chalk-and-cheese youthful sidekick. There is even a Death in the title, suggesting that Death Valley (BBC One) not only looks a bit like all the other cheerful come-for-the-location, stay-for-the-murders crime dramas on TV (ie. Death in Paradise, Midsomer Murders) but that it is merely the same formula set in Wales.