TV
theartsdesk Q&A: actor Polly Walker on 'Bridgerton' and the new breed of period dramaMonday, 25 January 2021
Polly Walker's character in Netflix's sumptuous new Regency romance, Bridgerton, could've easily been little more than a villainous Mrs Bennet. We meet Lady Featherington as she's forcing one of her daughters into a tiny corset, muttering about how... Read more... |
It's a Sin, Channel 4 review - poignant, funny, vibrant masterpieceSunday, 24 January 2021
Finally, it seems, the time is right for a major British TV drama about how the AIDS crisis hit the early 1980s London gay scene. We’ve come a long way even since the audacious launch of Russell T Davies’s triumphant Queer As Folk, also on Channel 4... Read more... |
Call My Agent!, Series 4, Netflix review - the final bow for the Parisian showbiz saga?Friday, 22 January 2021
Sad to report, this fourth series of Call My Agent! (Netflix) will be the final outing for this caustically addictive saga of actors and their agents. The show’s unique trademark has been its success in attracting an impressive roster of A-list... Read more... |
Silenced: The Hidden Story of Disabled Britain, BBC Two review - documentary fails to deliverWednesday, 20 January 2021
What a television programme gets called is not always the choice of the people making it, but it certainly is the choice of its broadcaster. In the case of Silenced: The Hidden Story of Disabled Britain, the relevant people at the BBC may come... Read more... |
Servant, Apple TV+ review - shocks, shivers and black humour in missing-baby sagaTuesday, 19 January 2021
The oeuvre of M Night Shyamalan has tended to veer between unsettling creepiness and sometimes hilarious misfires, but, working as Executive Producer with screenwriter Tony Basgallop, he’s hit the spot with this unnerving series for Apple TV +. Just... Read more... |
Finding Alice, ITV review - thriller, comedy or melodrama?Monday, 18 January 2021
Or, What The Durrells Did Next. Writer Simon Nye, writer/director Roger Goldby and star Keeley Hawes are all veterans of ITV’s Corfu-based fantasy, and while Finding Alice superficially resembles a thriller, like its predecessor it’s more of an... Read more... |
Spiral, Series 8, BBC Four review - dark days in the City of LightSunday, 10 January 2021
The discovery of a grotesque murder is the traditional way to begin a new series of Spiral, and this time around the cadaver belonged to a young Moroccan boy, nicknamed Shkun. He’d been beaten to death with an iron bar and stuffed into a laundromat... Read more... |
Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie, Sky Documentaries review - the classic motor racing film that never wasWednesday, 06 January 2021
The motor racing passion of movie star Steve McQueen is well documented, from his motorcycling exploits in The Great Escape to the rubber-burning car chase around San Francisco in Bullitt to his weird but mesmeric sports car odyssey Le Mans. Less... Read more... |
The Great, Channel 4 review - Russian history gets a whirl in the fictional blenderMonday, 04 January 2021
History ain’t what it used to be, not on television at any rate. Recently we’ve witnessed the ongoing furore about the factual accuracy or otherwise of The Crown, while Bridgerton has cheekily galloped bareback over the conventional cliches of telly... Read more... |
The Serpent, BBC One review - tracking down the hippie-trail murdererSaturday, 02 January 2021
“They’re only rich assholes.They don’t merit your concern,” serial killer and psychopath Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim, A Prophet, Heal the Living), aka rich French gem-dealer Alain Gautier, tells his girlfriend Marie-Andrée in The Serpent as he... Read more... |
Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks, BBC One review - a perfectly predictable rompSaturday, 02 January 2021
The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) has a simple routine: she gets up at the same time every day, tramps out for her allotted hour of exercise, and spends the rest of the day staring out of the window, yearning for freedom. Sound familiar? That’s a bit... Read more... |
Best of 2020: TVTuesday, 29 December 2020
Okay, so some people taught themselves the violin or wrote a novel, but under this year’s circumstances, it was inevitable that television (terrestrial, cable, online or otherwise) was going to clean up. With large chunks of the population forced to... Read more... |
