TV
Paranoid, ITVFriday, 23 September 2016
They keep on coming, these crime dramas, from every direction. The Viking invasion continues, the co-productions with France, the ongoing American global takeover. Meanwhile back in Blighty, Red Productions have been a reliable source of quality... Read more... |
Brexit: A Very British Coup?, BBC TwoFriday, 23 September 2016
This look back at the events earlier this year when the country elected to buy a car, sight unseen – and from proven liars – to drive us into an imagined and politically unstable future, was a little confusing to me at first. Now, I do remember a... Read more... |
Gaga for Dada: The Original Art Rebels, BBC FourThursday, 22 September 2016
If you’ve had half an eye on BBC Four’s conceptual art week, you’ll have noticed that the old stuff is where it’s at, with Duchamp’s urinal making not one but two appearances, equalled only by Martin Creed, that other well-known, conceptual stalwart... Read more... |
National Treasure, Channel 4Wednesday, 21 September 2016
Arresting elderly entertainers for historic sexual abuse now appears to be the primary function of the police, and here they are doing it again in Jack Thorne's new drama about veteran comic Paul Finchley. Finchley is part of a much-loved double act... Read more... |
Bricks!, BBC FourWednesday, 21 September 2016
The wilder shores of contemporary visual art are now ephemeral or time-based: performance, installation, general carry-on and hubbub. But once upon a time – say, the 1960s – it was the nature of objects, pared down to essentials, and often made from... Read more... |
The Night Of, Sky AtlanticFriday, 16 September 2016
On the face of it a murder mystery, The Night Of develops steadily into a panoramic survey of the American justice and prison system and attitudes to race and class. Produced by BBC Drama and HBO, it's based on the BBC's 2008 series Criminal Justice... Read more... |
Natural World: Jaguars – Brazil's Super Cats, BBC TwoThursday, 15 September 2016
In film and photography, zoos and on safari (we should be so lucky) we admire the great cats, kings of jungle and forest, top of the food chain, predators, and gorgeous to boot. But in spite of this admiration, some human populations hardly bear... Read more... |
British Sitcom: 60 Years of Laughing at OurselvesTuesday, 13 September 2016
Sixty years of sitcoms in 60 minutes? That's a big ask, but the makers of this whizz-through of British sitcoms tried, with a mega session of clips and comedy experts opining about them in a one-off documentary charting the importance of sitcom in... Read more... |
Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue, BBC TwoFriday, 09 September 2016
Documentary film-maker Richard Macer, who has only just bought his first copy of Vogue, is embedded in the magazine in its centenary year. “The office here is a very polite and guarded world,” he murmurs nervously. “Over the next few months I’m... Read more... |
Motherland, BBC TwoWednesday, 07 September 2016
Motherhood seems to be a thing for Sharon Horgan at the moment. First came Catastrophe, the Channel 4 comedy about unplanned parenthood she writes and co-stars in with Rob Delaney, and now Motherland, a pilot co-written with Graham and Helen Linehan... Read more... |
Cold Feet, ITVTuesday, 06 September 2016
You can usually tell a show is in trouble when it executes one of its main characters. By the end, Cold Feet had run out of gas. Its instinct to laugh at life rubbed up against genuine grief, and there was nowhere for it to go but off air. But 13... Read more... |
Poldark, Series 2, BBC OneMonday, 05 September 2016
Those who frequent Cornwall know that most of its place names begin with one of three prefixes. Indeed, check your copy of Richard Carew’s Survey of Cornwall (1602) for the source of the rhyme: “By Tre, Pol and Pen / Shall ye know all Cornishmen”. (... Read more... |
