Jane Andrews: true-crime drama heads tonight’s TV picks

ITV’s new drama about jane andrews takes centre stage this evening, with Mia McKenna‑Bruce earning praise for her performance alongside Natalie Dormer as Sarah Ferguson. The Lady is presented as a four‑parter that traces Jane Andrews’s fall from a working‑class dresser trying to fit into royal life to her conviction for murdering her boyfriend.

Jane Andrews drama on TV

The Lady stars Natalie Dormer as Sarah Ferguson and Mia McKenna‑Bruce as Jane Andrews. Hollie Richardson notes that the four‑parter opens with a working‑class Jane trying to fit in with this new royal world while managing her worsening mental health. The series follows Jane Andrews’s decline and says she was convicted for murdering her boyfriend; Mia McKenna‑Bruce is singled out as an excellent rising star.

Natalie Dormer and Mia McKenna‑Bruce

Natalie Dormer is described as playing Sarah Ferguson with aplomb in the drama, which revisits a scandal close to the duchess. The casting frames the drama around both the royal household and Jane Andrews’s personal struggles, setting a tone that reviewers call grim and unflinching.

Four‑parter plot and mental health

The Lady’s opening episode focuses on Jane Andrews’s attempt to belong in a new social world while managing worsening mental health. The series tracks the sequence from Jane’s arrival in that royal environment through episodes that chart her deterioration and the eventual conviction for the murder of her boyfriend.

Awards night: nominees and performances

Elsewhere in tonight’s coverage, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Marty Supreme and Hamnet are listed as the most nominated films of the night. British films I Swear, The Ballad of Wallis Island and Pillion are also mentioned as contenders. The evening’s ceremony is hosted by Alan Cumming and includes a performance by KPop Demon Hunters; the event is teased as a golden ticket to the Baftas.

Orchestras, drama quotes and competitions

A continuing series celebrates four of Europe’s best orchestras with a concert staged in Lisbon that features the Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by Aziz Shokakimov. The programme includes Ravel’s La Valse, Debussy’s La Mer and the symphonic poem Vltava by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, as highlighted by Jack Seale.

On drama strands, a penultimate episode involving Saintly Simon sees him confide in Ralph and be beset by hallucinations, while Jack’s rival faction “I’m bored of worrying about being cruel … it’s time to get whacks in” succumbs to murderous groupthink. The episode builds toward a storm and the sense that someone is about to be martyred, punctuated by the lines: “Kill the beast. Cut his throat. Spill his blood …”, noted by Ali Catterall.

In a separate entertainment contest overseen by Alan Carr and Susie Dent, 12 brainboxes are whittled down to a final four with challenges that include a complex mathematical maze and a memory game based on the periodic table. Ellen E Jones highlights that an ambulance technician named Ollie could remember every number plate on her estate as a child, which should make the memory round a doddle for her.

Breathless and sport listings

For late‑night cinema, Breathless is scheduled at 12. 35am; Simon Wardell recommends Jean‑Luc Godard’s 1960 classic A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) for those interested in the French New Wave. The piece recalls that Richard Linklater has a new film about the making of Breathless and contrasts that with Godard’s original, in which Jean‑Paul Belmondo’s impulsive, on‑the‑run criminal Michel woos Jean Seberg’s American student Patricia in a vividly depicted Paris.

Sports fixtures for the day include Premier League football with Nottingham Forest v Liverpool at 1pm followed by Tottenham v Arsenal at 4. 25pm. Women’s FA Cup football lists Chelsea v Man Utd at 1pm as a fifth‑round match, and Liverpool v Everton at 4pm. Six Nations rugby union features France v Italy at 2. 20pm from Stade Pierre Mauroy in Lille. HR and other contributors round out the listings and commentary.

Closing paragraph: The evening’s schedule is topped by The Lady, a four‑part drama charting jane andrews’s fraught trajectory and conviction, supported by a mix of awards coverage, orchestral programming, gripping drama episodes and a full slate of sport and late‑night cinema.