PICKS OF THE MONTH: FEBRUARY 2025, WHAT TO WATCH THIS MONTH

What to watch this week.

Miss Austen

BBC One

Miss Austen is adapted by BAFTA-winning writer Andrea Gibb (Elizabeth is Missing, Mayflies) and takes a literary mystery – Cassandra Austen notoriously burning her famous sister Jane’s letters – and reimagines it as a fascinating, witty and heart-breaking story of sisterly love, while creating in Cassandra a character as captivating as any Austen heroine.

Virdee

BBC One

Set and filmed in Bradford, Virdee follows Detective Harry Virdee (Staz Nair), a cop disowned by his Sikh family for marrying Saima (Aysha Kala), who is Muslim. Harry struggles with the abandonment and now with his young son, Aaron, growing up and asking questions, thinks it might be time to attempt to reunite with his family. His personal life in chaos, he must now hunt down a serial killer targeting the Asian community.

Waterloo Road

BBC One

Once at the top of the Ofsted ranks, Dame Stella found herself knocked off her pedestal thanks to her cutting words about parental incompetence going viral, but her uncompromising work ethic, strict moral compass and no nonsense approach makes her the perfect candidate to reform Waterloo Road.

Amandaland

BBC One

Following three series of Motherland, a brand-new spin-off, Amandaland, is coming to the BBC, focused on Amanda (Lucy Punch). Post her divorce, Amanda has had to downsize and up sticks to South Harlesden, or as the Estate Agent calls it SoHa (definitely not the area around Wormwood Scrubs prison).

With both Manus and Georgie now at secondary school, Amanda has to try and get her head around raising teenagers, dealing with modern motherhood horrors like teenage drinking, fake Instagram accounts and eco anxiety. Not even a woman as certain of her parenting as Amanda can deal with these nightmares alone.

Am I Being Unreasonable

BBC One

Series two begins where series one left off, mid panic attack. Has Nic got away with murder? Quite possibly. Has she raised her son Ollie to follow in her murky footsteps? Kicked out of the family home for brotherly love – loving the wrong brother – Nic is reduced to sharing a caravan with her not so trustworthy best friend Jen.

Great British Menu

BBC Two

It's the 20th anniversary series of Great British Menu, and four chefs compete for north west England with canapes, starters and fish dishes celebrating great Britons of the past for a banquet at historic Blenheim Palace.

Boarders

BBC Three

Boarders follows five talented black inner-city teens transported to an alien world – a British boarding school – after gaining scholarships to the prestigious St. Gilbert’s. They set out to make the most out of the opportunity, despite their places only being offered as a poorly-disguised PR exercise to improve the reputation of the school.

Britain's Got Talent

ITV1

Ant & Dec will once again lead the nation through a series of auditions featuring a wonderful array of talent, who’ll be performing to secure a spot in the live semi-finals by impressing the four inimitable judges - Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dixon and Bruno Tonioli.

Brand new to Series 18 is social media sensation KSI, whose wide-ranging talents make him the perfect choice to spot emerging talent as he temporarily steps in as guest judge.

Unforgotten

ITV1

The sixth series sees the return of Sinéad Keenan and Sanjeev Bhaskar as DCI Jess James and DI Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan, bringing back their compelling on-screen partnership as they delve into unresolved crimes and promising another powerful exploration of hidden truths and long-buried secrets.

Joining Sinéad and Sanjeev are Victoria Hamilton (Cobra, His Dark Materials), MyAnna Buring (The Responder, The Witcher, The Salisbury Poisonings), new faces Max Fairley and Elham Elas, and celebrated British actors Jan Francis and Damien Maloney.

G'Wed

ITV2

The second series will continue to tackle life’s big themes with a funny lens whilst keeping Liverpool’s distinctive voice and spirit at its heart. Expect more sharp wit as our Scouse gang navigate new challenges, from age gap relationships and consent to acceptable ways to make money while still in school.

Go Back To Where You Came From

Channel 4

The show will immerse an opinionated group of six Brits, with views across the immigration argument, in the reality of the perilous journeys refugees and migrants make to the UK.  Starting on our UK borders, our contributors will first travel  to the homelands that refugees are so desperate to leave.

One Question

Channel 4

A seemingly simple yet deceptively difficult general knowledge quiz hosted by Claduia Winkleman in which pairs of contestants must answer just one question correctly. But that one question comes with 20 possible answers and only one is correct. All the players must do to win £100k, is choose which is the correct answer. Eliminate the incorrect answers and they’ll be on the path to victory, but if they eliminate the one correct answer it’s game over.

Gogglebox

Channel 4

From the Saturday night juggernauts and the week’s big soaps, to documentaries and gritty drama, the Gogglebox households offer witty, insightful, feisty and sometimes emotional critiques of the week’s popular and topical TV shows. Their reviews could also be interrupted by breaking news stories and controversial TV events – subjects the outspoken households certainly won’t be shying away from.

The White Lotus

Sky Atlantic

The social satire is set at an exclusive Thai resort and follows the exploits of various guests and employees over the span of a week. Starring Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, Patrick Schwarzenegger.

Celebrity Bear Hunt

Netflix

Holly Willoughby hosts this action-packed competition show that sees a group of unlikely British celebrities dropped into the Central American jungle as prey for one of the world's most fearsome predators – Bear Grylls.

Bear believes there’s an action hero inside us all - even the celebs - but how strong is their will to survive? As Bear puts them through their paces, those who fail to impress will face the dreaded ‘Bear Hunt’ – a brutal game of cat and mouse where they’ll be hunted down by Bear himself and, if captured, eliminated from the show.

A Thousand Blows

Disney+

The action-packed trailer takes viewers back to the brutal East End of London in the 1880s. Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), best friends from Jamaica, find themselves thrust into the criminal underbelly of London’s thriving bare-knuckle boxing scene.

As Hezekiah finds fortune and fame through the art of pugilism, he attracts the attention of the infamous Queen of the Forty Elephants, Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), who sets about exploiting his talents to further her criminal enterprise. Meanwhile the menacing and self-declared emperor of the East End boxing world, Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), determines to destroy Hezekiah whose ambitions to fight in the West End threaten everything he has built. What ensues is a battle of the old world against the new.