THIS year is shaping up to be a cracking one on BritBox South Africa. Jane Austen fans are sure to swoon over the romantic seaside shenanigans in season two of Sanditon, which will be new and exclusive to BritBox, while Idris Elba’s army of adherents can look forward to seeing him in the boxing ring for the docuseries Idris Elba’s Fight School.
While those dates are not yet confirmed, this is what you can watch in February. A sure-fire 2022 highlight is the first season of The Cleaner (17 February), a dark comedy written by and starring Greg Davies (The Inbetweeners, Cuckoo) as a professional crime-scene cleaner. It’s loosely based on the German comedy series Der Tatortreiniger, and features Helena Bonham Carter in an offbeat cameo as a widow-slash-murderer. Pictured above, Davies as Paul ‘Wicky’ Wickstead (©Studio Hamburg UK – Photographer: Ryan O’Donoghue).
Devotees of Father Brown are bound to relish tucking into the first season of Sister Boniface Mysteries, another BritBox Original on Tuesday 8, Tuesday 15 and Tuesday 22 February (two new episodes weekly). A spin-off of the hugely popular series, it stars Lorna Watson as Sister Boniface of St Vincent’s Convent – a nun, moped rider, winemaker and part-time forensic scientist. Set in 1960s rural England, this entertaining detective drama follows the intrepid nun’s crime investigations at a time when police forensics was in its infancy. Also featuring a strong supporting cast that includes Max Brown (Downton Abbey, The Tudors) and Jerry Iwu (Sex Education, Halal Daddy).
South African audiences can also look forward to seeing the remaining four episodes of Vera season 11 fresh from the UK on 3 February. Vera stars award-winning actress Brenda Blethyn (Secrets and Lies, Little Voice) as the unglamorous but brilliant Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope, who’s back with more brutal murders to solve.
Narrated by Ray Winstone, Hollywood Bulldogs: The Rise and Falls of the Great British Stuntman is rough-and-tumble story about the British performers who created and performed iconic action sequences in Hollywood blockbusters such as Indiana Jones, Rambo, Star Wars, Superman and the Alien and 007 films in the 1970s and 1980s. In the process, they helped turn stunt work into a legitimate profession. Watch it from 24 February.
Last – but most emphatically not least – the BAFTAs will be broadcast on BritBox on 13 March, 2022. The British Academy Film Awards recognise the best in British and international contributions to film every year, and viewers can expect to see acting royalty stepping out on the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall following a creative but challenging year for filmmaking.
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