Documentary directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are rapidly getting themselves a reputation for making things that will make viewers’ palms sweat.
A couple of years ago, Free Solo, their vertigo-inducing documentary about a climber’s 3,000ft ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite without ropes, made me feel physically sick, and now they’re back with another story that you’ll probably watch with one hand clutched to your mouth.
The Rescue (Disney+) recounts the truly remarkable operation to save the Wild Boar football team – 12 boys and their coach – from a water-logged cave in Northern Thailand in 2018.
Rather than focusing on the boys’ ordeal, this is all about the rescuers – in particular, a group of amateur British cave divers who found the children deep underground and then came up with an ingenious, albeit utterly terrifying, plan to get them out.
Realising that it would be impossible to transport a child with no diving experience through submerged underground caves for several hours, the team come up with a solution that sounds unthinkable – they would sedate the boys with painkillers then pull them through unconscious.
The final part of the documentary is how that rescue plays out and it’s every bit as nerve-shredding as it sounds.
Even though the worldwide media coverage of the operation means that almost everyone watching this documentary knows the happy outcome, it doesn’t for a second take anything away from this film.
If anything, that means the hiccups – like when a diver lost his safety line or when the drugs wear off mid-rescue – even more tense.
This is one of the best documentaries you’ll see this year – and the only thing you need to do as a viewer is remember to breathe.
They’d need to pay me to watch more of this
You can tell that ITV are quite keen on their X Factor replacement show Walk The Line because they repeated it only two hours after it had finished on Sunday night.
Either that or they ran out of programmes.
Walk The Line is the brainchild of Simon Cowell, who is rapidly proving to be a bit of a one-trick pony when it comes to talent shows.
Five musical acts performed each night and the twist was that the winning one can either take home a cheque for £10,000 or perform again the next day and maybe win £500,000 at the end of the series.
Personally, I think they should have been paying viewers to return the following night.
Breathtaking finale
Succession has spent three series dishing out a steady stream of betrayal, bad behaviour and boardroom battles but, even still, the brutal last moments of this week’s finale took the breath away.
As with all the best TV series, the writers were five steps ahead of the audience, so when we discovered, in the final seconds, which unlikely character was behind the shocking power grab it came as both a body blow and utterly unsurprising.
Looking back, they have been laying track all series for this brilliant revelation and it sets up the possibility of an absolutely cracking fourth season.
Three series in, I think we can now safely say that Succession is one of television’s all-time greats.
They proved his point
It was interesting to watch the online reaction to David Baddiel’s Social Media, Anger And Us (BBC2) this week.
The documentary was a look at social media and how it might have coarsened discourse both on and offline.
Amid the reasonable comments (both pro and con) there were also people who bombarded him with vile abuse, seemingly oblivious to the fact they were proving him right.
Film of the week: Wrath of Man (Amazon Prime)
Both director Guy Ritchie and star Jason Statham have had patchy careers to date, but heist thriller Wrath Of Man is a terrific and testosterone-fuelled return to form for both men.
Statham turns his growl up to 11 to play H, the new employee at an LA armed vehicle company that’s finding itself increasingly targeted by robbers.
When he foils a particularly violent raid it becomes clear that there’s more to H than meets the eye…
While Ritchie perhaps overcomplicates things with a wholly unnecessary flashback structure, that’s a minor quibble because when the bullets start flying and Statham’s character shifts from mysterious tough guy into rip-roaring-rampage-of-revenge guy, it’s a pleasure.
If you’re an action film addict, this is one of the best of the year and not to
be missed.