BBC Four
Top of the Pops: The Story of 1976, BBC FourFriday, 01 April 2011
Thank goodness for selective memory, because although I remember that pop music had something of a mid-life crisis between the sequin explosion of glam rock and the spittle tsunami of punk rock, I had been blissfully spared comprehensive recall of... Read more... |
Sex and the Sitcom, BBC FourTuesday, 29 March 2011
Whatever you think of Friends, you have to concede it was good in the sack. If there were jokes to be had about sexual fantasy, sexual abandon and sexual incontinence, they were had. The one with free porn, the one with Rachel dressing as Princess... Read more... |
Grand Prix: The Killer Years, BBC FourMonday, 28 March 2011
Following yesterday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix, McLaren's team boss Martin Whitmarsh was extremely unhappy that his driver Jenson Button had been given a drive-through penalty. Button had overtaken a Ferrari by cutting a corner, and... Read more... |
Women in Love, BBC FourThursday, 24 March 2011
As preparation for this new account of Women in Love, I conscientiously picked up a copy of the novel for the first time since studying it at university. Big mistake. By half an hour into the drama I was in a state of some discombobulation. His... Read more... |
The Story of Variety, BBC FourMonday, 28 February 2011
For those whose only knowledge of the form is the Royal Variety Performance, this programme (part of BBC Four’s variety season) gave a nice, if all too brief, overview. The first of a two-parter was presented by Michael Grade, whose family is... Read more... |
Reggae Britannia/ Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae, BBC FourMonday, 14 February 2011
BBC Four's Britannia series keeps it simple - it tells the story in a straight line, illustrates it with as much archive material as the budget will allow, and interviews as many key protagonists as it can find. If the subject is strong enough, you'... Read more... |
Afghan Cricket Club: Out of the Ashes, BBC FourMonday, 07 February 2011
At first sight, “Afghanistan cricket team” might be labled along with “The kosher guide to cooking pork” or “How to keep your promises, by N Clegg”. But in 2008, Taj Malik, an Afghan player passionate about the game, decided to try to take his... Read more... |
Ronald Reagan: American Idol, BBC FourSunday, 06 February 2011
Aptly for a programme whose title invokes a show which is all style, no substance, the subject of Ronald Reagan: American Idol is image. What was Reagan really like? How much of his career as a Hollywood star did he carry into office? And why... Read more... |
Hattie, BBC FourThursday, 20 January 2011
The way the BBC keeps knocking out these little biopics about the lives of various household names (John Lennon, Gracie Fields, Margot Fonteyn etc), you'd think there was nothing simpler than to get inside the mind of some complex public figure,... Read more... |
Storyville: Pablo's Hippos, BBC FourMonday, 17 January 2011
It’s not so much the children of mad celebs I feel sorry for as their animals. The private zoo stuffed with exotic, non-indigenous wildlife is a sure sign of money, power and hubris run riot. The tigers and chimps at the Neverland ranch became... Read more... |
Festivals Britannia, BBC FourFriday, 17 December 2010
A startling one in 10 British adults apparently went to a music festival this year. Given that I’m a music journalist and I didn’t, maybe I’m some kind of astronomically unlikely anomaly. I’d like to think so. But those familiar aerial shots of... Read more... |
My Father, the Bomb and Me, BBC FourFriday, 10 December 2010
It seems like an aeon ago that we had people who dared to make television series with names like Civilisation or The Ascent of Man. The notion of TV as a forum for vigorous intellectual debate and for taking the philosophical measure of human... Read more... |
