Pick of the week
My Brilliant CareerMiles Franklin’s 1901 coming-of-age novel about free-spirited country girl Sybylla Melvyn is regarded as a proto-feminist classic. It’s punchily brought to life in an adaptation that feels like a dusty but dynamic Australian second cousin to Bridgerton. Philippa Northeast stars as Sybylla: pushed reluctantly towards high society by her dirt-poor family but desperate to become a writer and fiercely resistant to, as she sees it, being “slowly turned on the spit of propriety”. However, there’s plenty about her family’s financial and social circumstances that she doesn’t fully understand. Northeast is an effervescent lead while Christopher Chung brings quiet charisma to Sybylla’s love interest, Harry. Netflix, from Thursday 13 AugustThe Chosen in the Wild With Bear GryllsGrilling … Bear Grylls talks to Dallas Jenkins in The Chosen In The Wild With Bear Grylls. Photograph: Amazon MGM Studios. /PAPerformative Christian wholesomeness squared in this series in which Bear Grylls takes the cast of religious drama The Chosen for gruelling but rewarding outdoor rambles around American natural wonders including the Adirondack Forest and the Great Basin Desert. As is customarily the way with such things, the combination of fresh air, nerve-racking challenges and extreme earnestness around campfires brings many issues to the surface – and, one by one, the actors (who include Jonathan Roumie, Paras Patel and Elizabeth Tabish) start to open up. Prime Video, from Sunday 9 AugustMourinhoPointed … José Mourinho in the titular documentary series. Photograph: NetflixOne of the more interesting and divisive characters of the Premier League era gets the deep-dive documentary treatment in this three-part series which, helpfully for Netflix, coincides with José Mourinho’s arrival at Real Madrid. It’s clearly made with Mourinho’s full cooperation (as a tour of his home, with a focus on his well-stocked trophy cabinet, suggests) but that doesn’t mean it glosses over the various controversies that have marked his career, most of which seem to stem from his almost pathological sense of ambition. As he wryly points out: “You wouldn’t do a documentary with a guy who won nothing.”
