Two Weeks in August review – Jessica Raine is extraordinary in this exquisite look at a holiday from hell

Drugs, sex, scorpions, breakdowns … a summer trip in Greece goes diabolically wrong in the BBC’s immaculate new show that will give you a well-earned break from bad TV Hell is other people. But a fortnight’s summer holiday in a Greek island villa with three pals you have known since university, the young second wife of one of them, your depressive husband and the mulish French nanny the second wife has hired to look after her foul child, is surely the innermost circle of it. Such is the diabolical situation in which Zoe (Jessica Raine) finds herself in Two Weeks in August, an utterly convincing and wholly compelling – in an “if somebody doesn’t push at least three-quarters of these credibly appalling individuals into the sea soon then I will clamber through the screen and do it myself” kind of way, which is the best kind of way – blackly comic drama exquisitely written by Catherine Shepherd, immaculately directed by Tom George and Matthew Moore and perfectly played by the whole cast. Zoe is a comprehensive school teacher managing life with more grace under pressure than most of us do. A natural carer and conciliator – other characters call her a people-pleaser, be

May 23, 2026 → May 23, 2026