TV
The Apprentice, Series 11, BBC OneThursday, 15 October 2015
Where do they find them? The candidates for each new series of The Apprentice, that is. It's not as if they don't know the score by now - humiliation, first in the boardroom by Lord Sugar and his clunking putdowns, and then on nationwide television... Read more... |
River, BBC OneWednesday, 14 October 2015
Crime drama is a bit like the wheel. There’s only so much scope for reinvention. People try to come up with novelties all the time, then you turn on the telly and realise everyone else has had the same idea. Rumpled cops in macs, ex-cops haunted by... Read more... |
Homeland, Series 5, Channel 4Monday, 12 October 2015
Stunningly reinvented in series four, Homeland sustained the momentum with this tense and menacing fifth season opener. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has now quit the CIA for a new job in Berlin, where she's working as head of security for... Read more... |
Return to Larkinland, BBC FourMonday, 12 October 2015
Return to Larkinland was the second of AN Wilson’s intimate portraits of poets, following his similar excursion to “Betjemanland” last year. His very particular form of exploration of the biographical genre results in a selectively detailed portrait... Read more... |
Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death, BBC TwoSunday, 11 October 2015
The tragic love of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath is probably Britain’s most notorious 20th-century relationship. While other controversies – for example, those of Wallace Simpson, John Profumo and Princess Diana – have been laid to rest, Hughes and... Read more... |
Hugh Scully: From Antiques to Downing StreetSaturday, 10 October 2015
"I walked into her office and started the usual small talk about what a charming room it was and what a lovely view and I do like your curtains. She didn't know me from Adam - she didn't watch Antiques Roadshow, and she wasn't interested in my small... Read more... |
Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie, BBC FourSaturday, 10 October 2015
If there was any doubt as to the musical preferences of BBC4's commissioning arm, consider this: the whole history of funk got an hour. Meanwhile, indie music – a niche, artistic movement that somehow ended up drinking champagne while... Read more... |
Unforgotten, ITVFriday, 09 October 2015
The rule doesn’t always hold good, but in a television drama a fairly reliable kitemark of quality is when the opening credits list the cast and you’ve heard of them. The title sequence of Unforgotten promised Trevor Eve, Nicola Walker, Sanjeev... Read more... |
Doctor Foster, Series Finale, BBC OneThursday, 08 October 2015
Revenge dramas are such a guilty pleasure - there's a vicarious thrill in watching a baddie being taken down in a way that we might wish to, but never would, in real life. And boy, but did Gemma take down cheating husband Simon in the closing... Read more... |
The Celts: Blood, Iron, and Sacrifice, BBC TwoTuesday, 06 October 2015
Not a ray of sunshine illuminated the landscapes that were explored in this stormy programme, the first of a three-part history of the Celts. It aimed not only to show the latest investigations into the Bronze and Iron Age tribes who inhabited... Read more... |
From Darkness, BBC OneMonday, 05 October 2015
This is the first of two new TV series this week to feature a female police officer investigating the discovery of long-buried skeletons (the other one is Thursday's Unforgotten on ITV). The two shows are different in tone, but still reminiscent of... Read more... |
Storyville: A Syrian Love Story, BBC FourTuesday, 29 September 2015
Managing the boundaries of closeness in documentary filmmaking can be a complicated issue. Does the documentarist figure only as a fly-on-the-wall observer – or become involved, caught up in the story of his or her subject? Is it possible to... Read more... |
