In White Man Walking (BBC4, 27 May), the filmmaker Rob Bliss charts his 1500-mile journey wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, walking from the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi, to Washington, DC. Filmed over 60 days in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, White Man Walking portrays the physical toll of blisters, sunburn, and insect bites, of traversing vast distances on foot, on roads designed for cars, together with the psychological pain of threats and insults. Since her childhood, the director Ali Naushahi, an imam’s daughter, has seen parallels between her life as a working-class British Pakistani woman and that of the 18th-century rector’s daughter Jane Austen. That immersion shines through in Jane Austen: Rise of a genius (BBC2, first of three episodes, 26 May). The writer’s exploration of women’s economic precariousness heralded a new literary age: “There’s before Jane Austen, and after.”Today’s age of social-media saturation is humorously explored in Danielle Vitalis’s Danielle Does Life (BBC3, Thursday).

Source: The Times June 02, 2025 16:08 UTC