Pick of the week
H Is for Hawk
Getting up close and personal with animals can be a life-affirming way of feeling at one with nature. It can also be a way of avoiding the messier everyday of being human. For Helen Macdonald (a febrile Claire Foy), in Philippa Lowthorpe’s adaptation of Macdonald’s bestselling memoir, it is the tug between the two that brings her world crashing down. After her beloved father (Brendan Gleeson) dies, Helen decides to train a goshawk (“a perfectly evolved psychopath,” her mentor warns) in memory of their shared love of the great outdoors. But confronting avian life red in tooth and claw isn’t the same as dealing with the complex emotions of grief. An arresting, affecting drama.
Sunday 23 August, Netflix
