A reborn Luther

IDRIS ELBA’S detective drama Luther didn’t please everyone first time round, but it’s back for a four-part series all the same. Bridging the gap between seasons one and two, he explains: “It was a very dramatic climax and Luther is just a complete mess following the events of the last series.

He feels up against the whole world.”

It’s a year since the death of Luther’s estranged wife, Zoe, and best friend Ian Reed’s betrayal. While old acquaintance Alice (Ruth Wilson) passes time in a psychiatric unit and DS Justin Ripley (Warren Brown) languishes in uniform, Luther has been shut away with dusty files working on cold cases.

Thankfully, his angst is tempered by his new friendship with Mark North (Paul McGann) and their chess games – a bond formed through Zoe, the person that once divided them.

Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley) offers him a role in the new Serious and Serial Unit, so Luther accepts. He’s determined to devote his energy to reinstating Ripley as a rising star in the police force and help those who he hurt or compromised in the past, including Alice.

The team is joined by ambitious DS Erin Gray (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and their first case together involves a man who hides behind a Punch mask as he brutally slays his victims.

It was US drama The Wire that put Elba on the map. He’s a busy man – currently to be seen in cinemas as an alien gatekeeper in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor; pops up in Ghost Rider sequel Spirit of Vengeance next February, and is working on Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Prometheus.

THE residents of Rossport, in Ireland, have got nothing if not solidarity.

They’ve joined forces to fight one of the world’s most powerful oil companies, Shell, which has taken a shine to Broadhaven Bay, in the remote Co Rossport community.

The area sustained generations of farmers and fishermen, but could be just as useful to the Anglo-Dutch multinational.

True Stories documentary The Pipe looks into how, six years ago, five men were imprisoned after they defied a court injunction allowing workers to enter the land and lay a high-pressure gas pipeline.

Ever since, there have been whispers that the Irish state subverted the constitutional rights of its citizens to help the oil company seize land against the wishes of its owners.

In the aftermath of Shell’s arrival, the community became divided on how it should handle a pipe that could bring economic prosperity, but also destroy a way of life that’s served generations.

IN Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, Jon Snow investigates the final weeks of the civil war between the Sri Lankan government and secessionist group the Tamil Tigers, in what has been described as some of the most horrific footage C4 has ever broadcast.

Images caught on mobile phones by Tamils under attack and government soldiers as war trophies show executions of prisoners, civilian camps following their targeted shelling, and dead female Tamil fighters.

A report by UN experts recently showed that as many as 40,000 people were killed in the final weeks of the war, and called for an independent inquiry into violations of human rights laws.

WE’VE found our own country’s supposedly most talented act, but not to worry, America’s finest eccentrics are now set to don our screens in the latest series of America’s Got Talent.

When we last saw them, judges Howie Mandel, Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne cheered on singer Kevin Skinner as he went on to win a million dollars and the chance to perform in a headline show at Planet Hollywood, in Las Vegas.

They’re refreshed since then, ready for a brand new competition and ready to sift through the singing monkeys, disappearing rabbits and cringe-worthy grannies to get to the cream of the crop and crown another seriously talented performer.