BBC One
Line of Duty, Series 6 Finale, BBC One review - crafty ending leaves wriggle room for a sequelMonday, 03 May 2021
WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERSHalf the fun of this series of Line of Duty has been the crescendo of conspiracy theories surrounding it, fuelled by the way creator Jed Mercurio has skilfully kept tapping into the LoD mythology built up over the... Read more... |
Line of Duty, Series 6, Episode 6, BBC One review - the pace accelerates for AC-12's final countdownMonday, 26 April 2021
As the finishing line begins to materialise through the haze of fear, suspicion and zany acronyms, the pace of this sixth series of Line of Duty (BBC One) has hotted up appreciably. In earlier episodes, there sometimes seemed to be a lack of... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, Series 3, BBC One review - is the drama turning to melodrama?Sunday, 28 March 2021
After arriving with a bang in 2018, Keeping Faith (BBC One) disappointed many (though not all) of its fans with 2019’s second series. It’s had a bit of a breather before this third – and final – series, first seen in its Welsh version Un Bore... Read more... |
Bloodlands, BBC One review - ghosts of the Troubles return to poison the presentMonday, 22 February 2021
Belfast-based thriller Bloodlands comes from the pen of first-time TV writer Chris Brandon, though he may find some of his thunder being stolen by the show’s producer, Line of Duty supremo Jed Mercurio. Line of Duty is filmed in Belfast too, though... 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... |
Small Axe: Education, BBC One review - domestic drama concludes groundbreaking film series with quiet powerMonday, 14 December 2020
The fifth and final film in the Small Axe series is titled Education. At first, it appears this refers to the education of the central character, 12-year-old London boy Kingsley Smith, impressively played by Kenyah Sandy, who’s transferred to a... Read more... |
Small Axe: Red, White and Blue, BBC One review - sobering real-life story of police officer Leroy LoganMonday, 30 November 2020
The third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet (BBC One) took for its subject the real-life story of Leroy Logan, the Islington-born son of Jamaican parents who joined the Metropolitan Police in the early Eighties. Despite encountering racism... Read more... |
Small Axe: Mangrove, BBC One review - explosive start to five films about racial injusticeMonday, 16 November 2020
With the Black Lives Matter movement spurred this year by another wave of police brutality against African Americans, Steve McQueen’s blisteringly powerful, viscerally topical drama reminds us of the UK’s own torrid record in that regard,... Read more... |
His Dark Materials, Series 2, BBC One review – upping the ante whilst retaining the magicMonday, 09 November 2020
The first series of the BBC and HBO’s fantasy adventure His Dark Materials felt even more timely than when author Phillip Pullman first published Northern Lights twenty-five-years ago. The second season builds on the heady mix of philosophy and... Read more... |
Extinction: The Facts, BBC One review - David Attenborough tells a devastating storyMonday, 14 September 2020
Fires are raging: by human agency – unthinking greed – in the Amazonian rainforest, by climate change, arson and accident in California and the American Northwest, and barely under control in Australia, another country whose leading politicians and... Read more... |
The Truth about Cosmetic Treatments, BBC One review - pain, but not much gain?Wednesday, 26 August 2020
According to one interviewee here, a young Mancunian woman festooned with eyeliner, tattoos, pumped-up lips and huge hoop earrings, a major motivation for having cosmetic treatments is to make yourself look like Kylie Jenner and the Kardashians. “... Read more... |
The Luminaries, BBC One review - one of the most visually arresting dramas of the yearMonday, 22 June 2020
Alarm bells start ringing whenever you discover an author is adapting their own work for a screenplay. In the case of New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton, the alarm proves to be false. Over the course of seven years, and apparently 200 drafts... Read more... |
