Sky 4K: 15 best things to watch in 4K on Sky Q, Sky Glass or Sky Stream
Stuff’s pick of Sky’s best Ultra HD bits. From classics to recent hits and all in glorious Sky 4K
Got Sky Q, Sky Glass or Sky Stream 4K TV? Ultra HD comes as standard with your Sky Multiscreen Sky Q subscription, and costs just £5-a-month extra with Sky Glass or Sky Stream, and while it doesn’t extend to everything available, the catalogue is steadily growing all the time. Here’s Stuff’s pick of the best that Sky 4K has to offer…
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Stewart Lee: Basic Lee
Over the past 20 years Stewart Lee has developed a reputation for writing stand-up shows with multiple layers, intricate structures, and whole sections that deliberately test the patience of his audiences. And while he claims Basic Lee is a simpler show, apart from the plainer backdrop that’s not entirely true.
All the Stewart Lee trademarks are here, particularly the dressing down he gives to late arrivals and the skewering of his stereotypical fan, but that’s exactly what makes the two-hour show so enjoyable. Stewart Lee revels in the fact that he’s a divisive figure and always has, so while Basic Lee is unlikely to win him many new admirers, it’s guaranteed to please his army of existing ones.
Ferrari
Is there a more respected and romanticised name in the world of motoring than Ferrari? The Prancing Horse is revered across the globe for its luxury sports cars and highly decorated racing teams – but it hasn’t always been that way.
Michael Mann’s imaginatively-named Ferrari tells the story of a troubled period in the company’s history, when its survival depended on a victory in the 1957 Mille Miglia – a dangerous endurance race from Brescia to Rome and back again. No prizes for guessing the ending, then, but this is also a tale of love, death, dedication and why you should avoid getting on the wrong side of Penelope Cruz.
For a film about cars there’s perhaps not quite enough four-wheeled action, and it can be difficult to pick up some of the heavily accented dialogue at first, but when those elegant machines do grace the screen it’s impossible not to fall in love with them.
True Detective: Night Country
It’s 10 years since True Detective first combined a complex whodunnit with occult weirdness in such a compelling way that it earned a place in the TV hall of fame, but none of the subsequent anthologies have managed to match it. Despite being littered with references to the original series, True Detective: Night Country doesn’t reach the same heights either, but if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to combine The Thing with Fargo, here’s your chance.
Set during the almost perma-darkness that falls in the depths of an Alaskan winter, Night Country investigates the disappearance of a group of scientists from a remote research station, with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis playing the uneasy pair of cops working a case that opens all kinds of old wounds for the remote town of Ennis and its people. There’s more reliance on classic horror tropes here than in previous instalments, and some key moments in the climactic sixth episode don’t quite stand up to interrogation, but the performances from its leads and the hugely atmospheric setting make it a very watchable addition to the franchise.
The Last of Us
Tomb Raider, Silent Hill and Max Payne are all proof that good games don’t necessarily translate well to film, but The Last of Us always felt perfect for television. The story of Joel and Ellie’s journey across a post-apocalyptic America was so emotionally powerful and morally complex that, in the right hands, it had the potential to be a truly great series – and Craig Mazin, the man behind HBO’s harrowing Chernobyl, has definitely delivered.
The show’s Cordyceps-ravaged world is instantly recognisable as the one from the game, full of flesh-hungry Infected and ruthless gangs of survivors, and while its nine episodes stay faithful to the main narrative arc of the game, it brilliantly fleshes out some of the more secondary characters and adds a few extra tasty plot nuggets for fans to sink their teeth into. The real triumph, though, is the portrayal of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and the way their relationship develops right up to that devastating ending.
Gangs of London
With possibly the highest body count of any show on TV, series one of Gangs of London was a more-than-a-little-bit-ludicrous mixture of Eastenders and The Raid. Similarities to the latter were no coincidence – the series was conceived by that film’s creators, Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, whose adrenaline-pumping, bullet-riddled set-pieces made the first series of Gangs of London so mindlessly watchable, even if it was a touch ‘Guy Ritchie by Waitrose’ at times.
The pair were less involved in this follow-up season – and it shows. While it still has plenty of blood-spattered moments – the shootout in a posh Paris nightclub and an assault on one of the big cheese’s mansions spring to mind – it can’t quite reach the thrilling heights of series one, spending a bit too much time being all serious and not enough cracking skulls. Oh, and the name’s still rubbish.
Edge of Tomorrow
If hostile aliens had invaded Earth during the filming of Groundhog Day, and Tom Cruise had been cast as the lead instead of Bill Murray, the result might’ve looked a bit like Edge of Tomorrow.
Cruise stars as Major William Cage, a combat novice who gets thrown in at the deep end in the fight against the invading hoard. But when he clocks that every time he dies he wakes up back where he started, Cage uses his unlimited lives to perfect his fighting skills and gradually gain the upper hand. Edge of Tomorrow is a lean, nimble blockbuster that doesn’t even have to rely on repeatedly killing Tom Cruise to keep things entertaining.
Gomorrah
Sky Italia’s Gomorrah returns for its fifth and final season – and those who’ve followed the lives of Gennaro, Ciro and co since the beginning will not be disappointed by how this story ends.
Genny ended season four by going into hiding, but with Naples threatening to boil over and an old acquaintance apparently coming back from the dead, his self-imposed exile doesn’t last long.
Gomorrah’s appeal has always lied in its twists and turns, unfiltered violence and outrageous interior design – and there’s plenty of all three on offer here.
Promising Young Woman
With its bubblegum colour palette and pop soundtrack, Promising Young Woman might look like a happy-go-lucky rom-com, but just like its lead character it has a hidden agenda. Carey Mulligan plays a 30-year-old medical school dropout called Cassandra, who pretends to be drunk on nights out in order to teach the self-confessed ‘nice guys’ who try to take advantage of her a thing or two about consent.
It’s this ambiguity that makes Promising Young Woman so watchable, especially when Cassie bumps into a former classmate and her unusual hobby escalates to something more personally vengeful. Of course, there are more wide-reaching, societal targets being skewered here too, not least the tendency to value a man’s career over a woman’s safety, but unfortunately it’s going to take more than one promising young woman to change that.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Just four years before Fury Road was released in 2015, director George Miller released Happy Feet Two, but what his fourth Mad Max film lacks in dancing penguins, it certainly makes up for with roaring engines, fire-breathing guitars and sun-scorched desert sands.
Tom Hardy plays the gruff, meme-worthy Max, who teams up with Furiosa (Charlize Theron) on what is essentially a two-hour car chase, albeit one with an armoured juggernaut being pursued by monster trucks, heavily-armed hotrods, and vicious biker gangs.
Fun fact: Fury Road’s main bad guy, Immortan Joe, is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also appeared as Toecutter in the original Mad Max way back in 1979.
ZeroZeroZero
Drug cartels and the Mafia are hardly underrepresented when it comes to movies and TV, but both together in one? Now we’re talking. ZeroZeroZero links the two groups together via a multimillion-dollar transatlantic drug deal, with a family of American brokers caught up in the middle – and the result is one of the best new series in years.
From the mountains of Calabria to the sprawling slums of Monterrey, via the oceans and deserts in between, this globe-trotting, time-hopping eight-parter is bleak but often breathtaking. Among the Heat-esque gunfights and deadly power struggles there’s also a surprisingly human touch, largely thanks to the excellent Andrea Risborough, with a pulsing soundtrack by Mogwai to top things off.
Jaws
There’s a danger when remastering classic films in 4K that all those extra pixels will make the special effects look ropey. And while the shark in Jaws certainly doesn’t look any more realistic in Ultra HD, it was hardly the most convincing man-eater in the first place.
That’s not to say the rest of the film suffers as a result. The increased resolution makes Amity Island look even more idyllic (as long as you don’t know what’s in the water) and Steven Spielberg’s direction is still a masterclass in tension that’s arguably never been beaten.
Avenue 5
Imagine writing a sitcom about an interplanetary cruise that goes wrong and discovering that, according to experts from NASA, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, one of the best things for protecting a spaceship against galactic radiation is human plops. With gags like that being dropped into your lap, who needs to write any others?
Fortunately, series creator Armando Iannucci isn’t that lazy, so Avenue 5 is full of the typically inventive dialogue, memorable characters and couldn’t-make-it-up scrapes familiar from his previous work on The Thick of It and Veep. The first episode isn’t the strongest but once it gets into its stride Avenue 5 is much more than just Red Dwarf for the Tesla generation.
Chernobyl
Unless you work for The Sun, you’re probably well aware that Chernobyl is based on a true story. Unlike a lot of other major tragedies, though, the events of 26 April 1986 have largely avoided dramatisation – and with this five-part series HBO has absolutely nailed it.
Depicting a paranoid and secretive state in a crisis like nothing seen before or since, Chernobyl reconstructs the disaster with exquisite attention to detail. From the accident at the power plant itself to its devastating and far-reaching consequences, this is masterfully made TV. You’ll never look at a cement mixer in the same way again.
Bad Boys II
However you feel about a third instalment of Bad Boys being made, the first one was a bonafide ‘90s classic. And while its sequel has its fair share of issues, it also has a few moments of exhilarating brilliance, not least the bit when the bad guys launch cars from the back of a transporter at Will Smith’s pursuing Ferrari.
Sure, the script is massively cliched but the chemistry between Smith and Martin Lawrence still fizzes and it arguably captures Michael Bay at his brainless peak, blowing stuff up just because he can. In a time when everyone seems obsessed with superheroes and CGI, this guilty pleasure almost feels nostalgic.
Billions
Now into its third series (with all three available in Ultra HD), Billions is about a grumpy US Attorney (Paul Giamatti’s Chuck) and his nemesis: a charitable-but-devious hedge fund manager called Axe, played by Homeland’s Damian Lewis.
But wait! Come back! It’s not all spreadsheets and interest rates. Yes, there’s a fair amount of baffling finance talk but it’s much funnier than you’d imagine, with the drama coming from the power struggle between these two big-bucks heavyweights. It’s classic cat ‘n’ mouse stuff, but on this occasion both animals are so rich they’re almost untouchable. Almost…
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Tom Wiggins
Contributor 
