Listener’s September viewing guide: Sophie Turner turns jewel thief, Elizabeth Taylor in her own words

The intimate thoughts of Liz

Screening: Sky Arts, Saturday September 28, 8pm

Streaming: Neon

Elizabeth Taylor’s name is no longer, in 2024, the embodiment of entertainment industry fame: that mantle is now carried by another woman called Taylor. But in 1964, when she sat down for a series of personal interviews with the journalist Richard Merryman, she was at her public peak. Merryman used the interviews to ghost-write her autobiography, Elizabeth Taylor, the following year. But he kept the tapes – and they now, with the permission of his and Taylor’s estates, form the basis of this HBO film. The conversations include her thoughts about her own sexuality and regrets about becoming a “public utility” and were too intimate for the time but resonate now.

Game of stones

Streaming: Neon from September 30

Picked early on by the Guardian as a potential 2024 “banger” and also “a whole lot of full period glam”. Anna Symon, who wrote Mrs Wilson and The Essex Serpent, turned her pen to Joan Hannington’s 2004 memoir I Am What I Am: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief. It’s a ripper of a tale, in which Joan leaves behind a violent marriage to professional crook Boisie Hannington (Frank Dillane, son of Stephen) and rises from petty crim to “highly talented diamond thief and criminal mastermind”. Such was her success, she became known as The Godmother. Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner transforms into Joan, sporting a number of disguises and a good deal of 80s fashion.

A very weird spectacle

Streaming: ThreeNow, from Wednesday, September 25

The phrase “stranger than fiction” could have been invented for this true-life documentary series. Natalia Grace was born in Ukraine with a rare form of dwarfism. In 2010, she was adopted by American couple Kristine and Michael Barnett. Less than three years later, she was abandoned by her adoptive parents, who claimed that she was not a child, but an adult sociopath set on harming her adoptive family. But the account they gave appeared to be based on fiction – specifically, the plot of a 2009 horror movie called Orphan – and the Barnetts turned out to be pretty weird themselves. You might feel a little dirty for sticking with the whole series, which seems unabashedly devoted to the spectacle of it all, but there’s no denying the strangeness.