TV
Storyville: Life, Animated, BBC FourTuesday, 21 February 2017
Slipped out in the Storyville slot without much fanfare, Life, Animated is the Oscar-nominated documentary which won a theatrical release and rave reviews in the US and UK last year. It’s a horribly clichéd word, but heart-warming is the best way to... Read more... |
SS–GB, BBC OneMonday, 20 February 2017
“What if the Germans had won the war?” has been a recurring theme in fiction, from Noel Coward’s Peace in Our Time to Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Robert Harris’s Fatherland. There was even a predictive pre-war “future history”... Read more... |
Tom Waits: Tales from a Cracked Jukebox, BBC FourMonday, 20 February 2017
“I’m not necessarily the ‘I’ in my songs” declared Tom Waits in James Maycock's documentary, its title a tipping of the proverbial hat to another artist who, in his 69 years on earth, inhabited many roles.Tom Waits has mostly kept journalists at arm... Read more... |
The Kettering Incident, Sky AtlanticThursday, 16 February 2017
Tasmania, Down Under is like Canvey Island (although somewhat larger): everyone knows where it is but no one wants to go there. The Kettering Incident reveals why: the bleak but beautiful landscape is blasted by Antarctic gales and the natives, with... Read more... |
Life of a Mountain: A Year on Blencathra, BBC FourWednesday, 15 February 2017
Two years ago BBC Four had a film about a year in the life of Scafell Pike. Arriving at glacial pace is the sequel: Life of a Mountain: A Year on Blencathra. The star this time round is more of a best supporting character actor than a headline... Read more... |
10 Questions for Actor Conleth HillMonday, 13 February 2017
Some know him only as Lord Varys the scheming eunuch, spymaster to the king of the Seven Kingdoms. Game of Thrones fans may be less familiar with Conleth Hill's other career as a nimble. light-footed stage actor of staggering range and skill whose... Read more... |
Andrew Marr: 'I don’t want to look like I'm in pain'Sunday, 12 February 2017
Television audiences love seeing familiar faces in different contexts – whether it’s actors exploring their ancestry in Who Do You Think You Are? or politicians awkwardly busting their moves on Strictly. But there’s always a risk that the camera... Read more... |
Arena: Alone with Chrissie Hynde, BBC FourSaturday, 11 February 2017
Despite having been a rock star since the late Seventies, Chrissie Hynde seems to be an introverted, elusive sort of person. If this Arena profile was anything to go by, she lives as a virtual recluse, positively revelling in solitariness. Like the... Read more... |
Unforgotten – Series 2 Finale, ITV / After Brexit: The Battle for Europe, BBC TwoFriday, 10 February 2017
From Jimmy Savile to the Rotherham scandal, child sexual abuse has become a recurring nightmare of our society, and thus is inevitably grist to the TV dramatist’s mill. It has been a crucial component in The Missing, National Treasure and... Read more... |
The Moorside, BBC OneWednesday, 08 February 2017
It takes a certain kind of perversity to make a true-life drama about a missing girl (Shannon Matthews) who wasn’t missing at all – the danger is that drama will be the only thing that’s missing. Neil McKay’s answer to the problem is to take a leaf... Read more... |
Timeshift: Flights of Fancy - Pigeons and the British, BBC FourWednesday, 08 February 2017
Pigeons were described in this riveting programme as man’s best feathered friends, as well as an urban pest: the 35,000 of them that used to flock round Trafalgar Square deposited some 390 tons of unharvested guano – bird poo, in simpler words –... Read more... |
Apple Tree Yard, Series Finale, BBC OneTuesday, 07 February 2017
Guilty or not guilty? Dum dum, dum dum. No, it was not just in your imagination. As the axe hovered over the neck of Yvonne Carmichael at the climax of Apple Tree Yard, and the madam forewoman waited to deliver the jury’s verdict, there was an... Read more... |
