TV
Pappano's Classical Voices, BBC FourMonday, 29 June 2015
Antonio Pappano, artistic director and chief conductor of the Royal Opera House, is a polymath, for he is also a brilliant and persuasive narrator of the history of music. Here he embarked on a four part history of the operatic voice, starting at... Read more... |
The Saboteurs, More4Saturday, 27 June 2015
The 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, documenting the Allies' mission to stop the Nazis from going nuclear, is to historical accuracy what David Starkey is to tact. Or common decency. The Saboteurs however, a Norwegian/Danish/British TV co-... Read more... |
Imagine... Frank Gehry: The Architect Says Why Can't I?, BBC OneWednesday, 24 June 2015
The hook for Alan Yentob's portrait of the 86-year-old architect Frank Gehry was the initiation and progress of an enormous new building in a rough portside area of Sydney, the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building for the business school of the University of... Read more... |
True Detective, Series 2, Sky AtlanticTuesday, 23 June 2015
Last year's debut series of True Detective starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in a fascinating slice of metaphysical Southern Gothic. That's all gone now though, because this time, writer Nic Pizzolatto has shunted the action out to the... Read more... |
Black Work, ITVMonday, 22 June 2015
Drama is all about secrets revealed, discoveries unfurled. Black Work was straight into that territory from the first scene. A man and a woman sat in a car, taking the solace from each other that they couldn’t find at home. As ever in such a... Read more... |
La Traviata: Love, Death and Divas, BBC TwoSunday, 21 June 2015
Verdi's La Traviata has become one of the best-loved and most-performed works in the operatic repertoire, but this is no thanks to sections of the English press. In this entertaining romp through the opera's history, presenters Tom Service and... Read more... |
Glastonbury Golden Greats, BBC FourSaturday, 20 June 2015
Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury is an odd time. For some it means carrying on carrying on, trying to wring the very last drops out of the weekend and putting off the inevitable, stomach-churning lurch that will signal a nosedive into a colossal... Read more... |
Thomas Chatterton: The Myth of the Doomed Poet, BBC FourTuesday, 16 June 2015
The young casualty of genius fires imaginations and fills coffers. Last year Dylan Thomas’s centenary was vastly celebrated. The Amy Winehouse industry is still shifting units. The spell cast by Sylvia Plath seems not to diminish. A Janis Joplin... Read more... |
Humans, Channel 4Monday, 15 June 2015
New sci-fi series aren't exactly a dime a dozen on British TV, awash as it usually is with serial killers, cops and costume dramas, so the fact that Humans not only exists but is also bold and fresh-looking triggers instant brownie points. It... Read more... |
The Trainer and the Racehorse: The Legend of Frankel, Channel 4Sunday, 14 June 2015
This was the story of a remarkable man, Henry Cecil, a genius with horses and 10 times Champion Trainer. He was felled by tabloid scandal but rose again to train one of the greatest racehorses in history, Frankel. This wholly absorbing programme was... Read more... |
TFI Friday, Channel 4Saturday, 13 June 2015
When TFI Friday first assaulted our screens (nearly) 20 years ago, things were very different. An untucked checked shirt passed for sartorial elegance, magazines sold in big numbers and, within their pages, women were routinely objectified, but... Read more... |
Stonemouth, BBC TwoFriday, 12 June 2015
A young man, in trouble with drunk or drugs, returns to his Scottish family riven by dark secrets? Of course, it’s a new Iain Banks dramatisation, the first since the author’s death two years ago. This version of his 2012 novel Stonemouth attempts... Read more... |
