MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review The Stranger, Undertone, and Outcome
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Cold comfort farm
MARIA DUARTE sees a drama about a fraught rural family that's raw, visceral and relentlessly bleak
WILL STONE applauds the anniversary tour of Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches by Madchester icons, Shaun and Bez
JAN WOOLF invigilates images that meditate on Palestine, and the people who witness them
A murderous convention of crime writers, a hymn to nursing, a monster hunt, and robber baron capitalism
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia
DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis
Dark River (15)
Directed by Clio Barnard
AFTER the evocative The Arbor and The Selfish Giant, Clio Barnard returns with a searing and grim Yorkshire drama about sibling rivalry, the effects of child abuse and burying the past, juxtaposed with a rural community in decline.
Inspired by Rose Tremain's novel Trespass, it stars the outstanding Ruth Wilson as Alice, a contract sheep shearer. Following the death of her father (Sean Bean), she returns to the family farm on the Yorkshire Dales for the first time in 15 years to claim the tenancy she believes is rightfully hers.
Her older brother Joe (Mark Stanley) is furious because he has been the one managing the farm in the meantime — and running it into the ground — while taking care of their dying father.
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