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TV tonight: hurrah for the return of Diane Morgan's hapless heroine

TV tonight: hurrah for the return of Diane Morgan's hapless heroine

The Guardian21-07-2025
10pm, BBC TwoHurrah for the return of Diane Morgan's gormless heroine in this fourth series. Mandy – quite believably – still hasn't got a job, so in the first of this week's double-bill, she needs to enrol on the Restart scheme. Cue a Pretty Woman style makeover, a run-in with an old school bully ('I've got mental health cos of you!') and a Martin Lewis cameo. Sian Gibson and Cheryl Fergison (Heather from EastEnders) also guest star. Hollie Richardson
8pm, Channel 4In Okinawa, Japan, they're living much longer: it's home to more centenarians than anywhere else on the globe. Filmed before he died, Michael Mosley uncovers a possible explanation. On the Faroe Islands, he joins a women's football team studying bone density, then in Halifax he meets an 84-year-old ballerina who reveals what's really behind muscle strength. Ali Catterall
9pm, BBC TwoElla Al-Shamahi's mind-blowing evolution series continues, and she's showing us how we became the only global species of human – including being the first to make the crossing to Australia about 45,000 years ago. She also learns more about Homo floresiensis, fondly referred to as Hobbits. HR
9pm, ITV1
It's 50 years since Jaws – and ITV claims to be on a mission to celebrate the magnificence of a much-maligned marine species, by encouraging celebrities to swim with 900kg tiger sharks. This episode may have you questioning if there isn't something else going on: because some of these celebrities are quite annoying, aren't they? Ellen E Jones
9pm, Channel 4We're halfway through the steamy thriller and it's the morning after the threesome before. Charlotte (Annabel Scholey) wants to forget about it, Jacob (Sam Palladio) is clearly chuffed about it happening, and Mia (Aggy K Adams) is distracted by learning that her photo is in the local paper. Who is she scared of finding her? More flashbacks give clues. HR
11.05pm, Channel 4A new documentary series gets inside the world of the notorious biker club, with first-hand accounts of the gang's criminal activities. The double-bill fires up by talking with ATF agent Jay Dobyns, who went undercover as an Angel, and biker Jay, who dreams of becoming 'fully patched'. HR
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'As soon as we connected, I would be smiling or laughing, and she was the same on her side.' There had been no guarantee the two would get along. Farsi is significantly older, with a daughter Hassouna's age, and she is a cosmopolitan, sophisticated woman who has travelled the world, while Hassouna has been restricted to Gaza all her life. Hassouna is devout while Farsi is profoundly sceptical of any religious talk and challenges her new young friend over what kind of god would allow innocent people to suffer so painfully. However there is far more that draws them together, in ways that are harder to define. 'She had this energy, this shining thing. She was solar,' Farsi says. 'That's the adjective that fits her. Her natural smile. There was this mutual fascination, sorority, comradeship – a mixture of all of these things – and we were happy as soon as we connected.' Farsi makes her phone a portal through which Hassouna recounts her story and the tragedy of Gaza. She talks about her family and introduces her shy brothers to Farsi. She has already made herself a photographer and poet by the time they meet, and Farsi coaches her into being a film-maker and to send out video of the ruination around her. Hassouna is supremely, naturally talented. Her pictures capture the everyday effort of her neighbours trying to survive in the rubble, while her use of language – in her poems and in conversation – is every bit as evocative. The film's title is taken from her passing description of what it is like to venture outside: 'Every second you go out in the street, you put your soul on your hands and walk.' In another conversation, struggling to make sense of what is happening, Hassouna asks: 'We live a very simple life, and they want to take this simple life from us. Why? I'm 24 and I don't have any of the things that I want. Because every time you reach what you want, there's a wall. They put up a wall.' The film should not work. It is determinedly rudimentary, filmed largely on one phone pointed at another. The image of Hassouna sometimes freezes and buffers as the internet connection ebbs and flows. But these glitches draw us in and make us experience the precariousness of their connection. 'That's why I decided to keep this low resolution and not to use a regular camera,' Farsi explains. 'I wanted it to be very low-key technically, to match the connection problems with her, to match the disparity of life here and there.' She had originally attempted a cleanly edited version with all the disconnections cut out. 'It was lacking soul. It didn't breathe. So we put it back in – this brokenness of image and sound.' The sweetness of the relationship at the core of the film is made bittersweet by the constant threat of death around Hassouna. Every so often she reports the death of relatives, or neighbours whose eviscerated homes she points to out of her window. It feels like the encircling darkness is in a direct struggle with Hassouna's smile and her instinctive optimism. Anyone who does not want to know which triumphs in the end should stop reading here. Towards the end of the film, Farsi calls Hassouna to give her the happy news that the film has been selected to be screened at Cannes. They excitedly talk about Farsi obtaining a French visa that might allow Hassouna to get out of Gaza temporarily to attend the festival. While they are talking, the young Palestinian sends the film-maker a photo of her passport. That was 14 April this year. The next day, a Tuesday, Farsi could not get through to Gaza to give Hassouna an update on preparations. 'So I said, 'OK, we'll do it on Wednesday,' the director recalls. 'On Wednesday, I was working on the film on my computer with my phone beside me, and all of a sudden I saw a photo pop up. I opened the notification and saw her photo with a caption saying she had been killed. I didn't believe it. I started calling her frantically, and then called a mutual friend, the one who introduced us, and he confirmed it was true.' In the middle of the night, two missiles fired by an Israeli drone had pierced the roof of her building and burrowed through before detonating, one of them exploding in the family's second floor apartment, the other just below. Fatma Hassouna was killed along with her three brothers and two sisters. Her father died later of his wounds leaving her mother, Lubna, as the sole survivor. The investigative group Forensic Architecture studied the missile strike and declared it a targeted strike aimed at Hassouna for her work as a journalist and witness. Farsi has no doubt. 'She was targeted by the IDF,' she says. 'There were two missiles dropped by a drone on her house. It means they found out where she was living, planned a drone with missiles to go through three storeys of that building and explode on the second floor. It's amazingly well planned in order to eliminate somebody who just does photography. 'I still can't believe it,' Farsi says, speaking from Bogotá, where she is touring with the film, which is now Hassouna's legacy. 'It's three months now, a bit more, and it's still quite unbelievable. For me, she is somewhere out there and I believe I will meet her someday.' In their conversations, Hassouna talked about all the places in the world she dreamed of seeing, while insisting she would always return home to Gaza. Shortly before she died, she told Farsi: 'I have the idea that I must keep going and I must document everything, to be part of this story, to be me!' She imagined passing on her experiences to her children, but instead they have been captured for a cinematic audience, and Hassouna's arresting personality has been preserved at the same time, a portrait of a unique individual among the 60,000 dead. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is in UK and Irish cinemas from 22 August. 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