THE AMERICANS, ITV ENCORE, 10pm
AS the latest series opens, our favourite Russian spies have a new persona. They’re posing as parents who have adopted a Vietnamese boy, Tuan.
He’s a fellow spy and is tailing a Russian boy whose father uprooted the family from Moscow in disgust at the Soviet system. Poor Pasha feels lonely in America, so Tuan has befriended him at school.
Soon Philip and Elizabeth are guests at Pasha’s home, cocking their heads in forced sympathy as his father rants about the idiocy of Soviet agriculture and the misery of queueing for bread.
Deep in the Soviet Union, Philip’s real son, Mischa, gets fake papers so he might reach his father in America. It’s not an easy task. He must escape via Yugoslavia and all he knows is that his dad is a travel agent somewhere in Virginia.
Then we’re back on classic spy territory as the episode ends with a lengthy section where they go on a mission to dig up something very nasty in the woods.
FEARLESS, STV, 9pm
HELEN McCrory stars in this new series as a maverick lawyer, Emma Banville. We know she’s a maverick because she smokes even when her colleagues cough and throw windows open, and she drives an old boxy Volvo, but underneath all the heavy-handed scenes which establish how bold and daring she is, there is a promising story here.
A woman sends her a frantic email saying her former husband is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and asking Banville to take his case. He was jailed 14 years ago for the rape and murder of a young girl. The country thought he was a monster, but the woman says he’s innocent and that police intimidation forced his confession.
Police pull over Banville (in her Volvo) and she is given a sinister warning. However, the story is spread thin after a sub-plot about Syrian refugees is added.
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