TV
Sunnyside, Sky Comedy review - the immigrant experience and the American dreamTuesday, 17 March 2020
The multi-talented Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar, Designated Survivor, House) took a two-year acting sabbatical in 2009 to work for the Obama administration. So he is, in theory, ideally placed to co-create, with Matt Murray, a semi-political TV sitcom... Read more... |
Belgravia, ITV review - when the toffs and the nouveaux riches collidedMonday, 16 March 2020
The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are... Read more... |
The Test: A New Era for Australia's Team, Amazon Prime review - how ball-tampering scandal forced a cricket revolutionSaturday, 14 March 2020
It was in March 2018 that Australia’s cricketers were caught ball-tampering during a Test match in Cape Town. The resulting public outcry and sanctions against the guilty players and assorted backroom staff shook the Australian game to the core.... Read more... |
Five Guys a Week, Channel 4 review - lemming-like contestants make spectacles of themselvesWednesday, 11 March 2020
Channel 4 loves to walk the line between the compulsive and the repulsive, and this new dating show, complete with fake-salacious title, is a peerless specimen. The set-up is simple – one woman asks five guys who are “looking for love” to move in... Read more... |
Beyond the Grace Note, Sky Arts review - march of the women conductorsMonday, 09 March 2020
Perhaps the most surprising thing is how good natured they all sound. There’s no anger. At least, not much – one can’t help wondering what they say off air. Through a kaleidoscope of vocation, hopes, dreams, inspirations, and worries about stuff... Read more... |
RuPaul's Drag Race, Season 12, Netflix review - 13 queens up the gameMonday, 09 March 2020
As RuPaul's best squirrel friend Michelle Visage, co-doyenne of the amused and amusing judges, put it, "that was some next-level shit". She was referring to a high point in the contest's weekly lip sync-ing finales, right at the end of the new... Read more... |
Hilary Mantel: Return to Wolf Hall, BBC Two review - the storyteller and the truthSunday, 08 March 2020
Spectacular success couldn't have happened to a more interesting person, or a better writer. The pithy but imaginative prose in the third and final instalment of Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, which as you may... Read more... |
Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Netflix review - thrilling documentary series wreaks havoc in the paddockSaturday, 07 March 2020
The 2020 Formula 1 season will commence in Melbourne next weekend... unless the race is cancelled because of the mounting coronavirus panic. Everyone will have to self-isolate and watch Netflix instead, so how fortunate that the ‘flix has delivered... Read more... |
The Trouble With Maggie Cole, ITV review - Dawn French stars in new comedy dramaThursday, 05 March 2020
ITV's drama department is in overdrive at the moment, with a seemingly endless release of series with high production values and stellar casts, and the latest is The Trouble With Maggie Cole. It's a six-parter based on an idea by Dawn French (... Read more... |
Beauty Laid Bare, BBC One review - a facial peel for the cosmetics businessWednesday, 04 March 2020
In this aptly-titled series (BBC One), four British 20-somethings visit the USA to investigate the inner workings of the beauty industry. Perhaps not surprisingly, they discover that it’s a hotbed of greed and exploitation.Their first stop was the... Read more... |
The Trip to Greece, Sky 1 review - jokes, jibes and indigestion in the footsteps of OdysseusWednesday, 04 March 2020
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan have been taking their bickering TV trips for a decade, beginning in the north of England in 2010 before working their way around Italy, Spain and now Greece (on Sky 1). They say this will be the last time, but believe... Read more... |
Liar, Series 2, ITV review - more crime-by-numbers from the Williams brothersTuesday, 03 March 2020
The first series of Liar, one of many thrillers from the fertile keyboards of Jack and Harry Williams, was on ITV back in 2017, so you may have forgotten the somewhat labyrinthine details. In a nutshell, smarmy surgeon and serial rapist Andrew... Read more... |
