TV
AIM Awards 2020, SBTV review - a game attempt to rewire awards ceremoniesThursday, 13 August 2020
Music awards shows are a strange beast: part window display, part industry conference and part party. Especially if you don’t have Brit Awards or Mercury Prize budget to create a whizz-bang spectacle, the ceremonies can be an interminable pileup of... Read more... |
Cuba: Castro vs the World, BBC Two - turbulent life and times of El ComandanteWednesday, 12 August 2020
During World War Two, President Franklin D Roosevelt described the USA as “the arsenal of democracy”. Only a couple of decades later, Fidel Castro was busily turning Cuba, only 100 miles from the US mainland, into the factory of revolution,... Read more... |
The Adulterer, Channel 4 review - atmospheric, addictive and bingeworthyMonday, 10 August 2020
It has taken a good half decade for the Dutch series Overspel (The Adulterer) to make it on to TV screens in the UK. Its 32 episodes were made in 2011-2015, but the third and final series is only now being broadcast on Channel 4’s Walter Presents.... Read more... |
Everything: The Real Thing Story, BBC Four review - brilliant but long overdueSaturday, 08 August 2020
This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and... Read more... |
Imagine... My Name is Kwame, BBC One review - interesting but incompleteFriday, 07 August 2020
Filmed, as one would, well, imagine, prior to lockdown, Imagine .... My Name is Kwame hearkens to what now seems a bygone era of full and buzzy playhouses and adventurous theatre-making that was about the live experience and not some facsimile... Read more... |
The Deceived, Channel 5 review - who's fooling who?Thursday, 06 August 2020
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again, except somebody had renamed it The House at Knockdara. This was the title of the first novel by Michael Callaghan, Cambridge literature don, aspiring writer and serial seducer of his female students.... Read more... |
Little Birds, Sky Atlantic review - decadence and intrigue in 1950s MoroccoWednesday, 05 August 2020
Diarist, novelist and writer of erotica Anaïs Nin lived a brilliantly-coloured life littered with affairs with literary A-listers (Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell et al). She might have been delighted by this playfully-written and... Read more... |
The Talk, Channel 4 review - coping with the legacy of racismWednesday, 05 August 2020
Shall we talk about racism? Currently we seem to be talking about it all the time, and it’s the question non-white parents in Britain sooner or later find themselves pondering as they watch their children grow up in our increasingly confrontational... Read more... |
Prodigal Son, Sky 1 review - meet Michael Sheen, psycho killerWednesday, 29 July 2020
We knew that Michael Sheen was a skilful and versatile actor, but lately he’s been getting dangerously good. Last year he roared into the third season of The Good Fight as the outrageous drug-fuelled lawyer Roland Blum, like an explosive fusion of... Read more... |
Our Baby: A Modern Miracle, Channel 4 review - trailblazing couple's amazing journeyWednesday, 29 July 2020
On one level this documentary could be summed up as “parents have baby”, but since the parents in question are “Britain’s most prominent transgender couple”, it was a lot more complicated than that. Jake Graf used to be a woman and his wife Hannah... Read more... |
Laurel Canyon, Sky Documentaries review - musical bliss in lotus landSunday, 26 July 2020
It was Alison Ellwood who directed 2013’s History of the Eagles, and now she’s at the helm of this new two-parter on Sky Documentaries, telling the story of the Los Angeles music scene from the mid-Sixties to the early Seventies. The musicians’... Read more... |
Bears About the House, BBC Two review - uphill struggle to save hunted animalsWednesday, 22 July 2020
Sun bears and moon bears are probably doomed, so why bother? Wildlife trafficking is a hugely profitable worldwide criminal enterprise, with small charities (fingers in the dyke, anyone?) doing their best to stem the flow.The international charity... Read more... |
