BBC Two
Money, BBC TwoWednesday, 26 May 2010![]() It was never going to work now, was it? Martin Amis’s dense yet surging 400-page novel condensed down to just two hours of primetime TV? But director Jeremy Lovering, along with writers Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford (Ashes to Ashes) certainly... Read more... |
Interview: Martin Amis on 'The Whole Book-To-Film Department'Friday, 21 May 2010![]() Martin Amis always had his own idea of who should play John Self, the anti-heroic slob narrator of Money. "The only regret I have in the whole book-to-film department,” he told me, “is that Gary Oldman never played John Self. We had a meeting with... Read more... |
Royal Wedding, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 May 2010![]() Where were you? For those of us too young to experience Kennedy’s assassination, which realistically is anyone under the age of 55, the Royal Wedding is the next event along the chain of history that simultaneously impinged on much of the globe’s... Read more... |
Exile on Main StreetMonday, 17 May 2010![]() The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street is such a quintessential rock epic that it ought to be added to the list of things they throw in for free on Desert Island Discs. Defying the old adage that all double albums would be vastly improved by being... Read more... |
I'm in a Rock'n'Roll Band, BBC TwoSaturday, 01 May 2010![]() This new series proposes to examine the individual roles played by the members of successful rock groups, but you could tell there was trouble in store from the narrator's opening question: "What is the DNA of a great rock'n'roll band?" Like the... Read more... |
Who Needs Fathers?, BBC TwoThursday, 01 April 2010Take two sets of separated parents and observe their opposing response to sharing the children. Colin and Alison haven’t involved lawyers, and divide childcare equally and amicably. Sandy, on the other hand, has spent tens of thousands of pounds on... Read more... |
The Culture Show: Henry Moore, BBC TwoThursday, 18 March 2010![]() What emerges from tonight’s Culture Show on Henry Moore, which examines how the sculptor exploited the media (and vice versa), is not the difference between the media of sculpture and television but the similarity. Rather than a simple programme... Read more... |
The Berlusconi Show, BBC TwoWednesday, 17 March 2010![]() Imagine if Rory Bremner had been banned from British television for the past 20 years, and Gordon Brown had put pressure on the BBC to get rid of Question Time because it had been critical of him. In the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi these things... Read more... |
Inside John Lewis, BBC TwoWednesday, 10 March 2010![]() There must have been gnashing of teeth and the rending of heavily discounted garments in the marketing departments of Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser et al, when they realised that their commercial rival had been granted a three-hour... Read more... |
A Band for Britain, BBC TwoTuesday, 09 March 2010![]() We know the grammar now by rote. Some local institution is on its uppers. A traditional way of life is threatened by changing times. Sic transit etcetera and so forth. What’s wanted is a shot in the arm, a kick in the seat, preferably administered... Read more... |
Generation Jihad, BBC TwoTuesday, 09 February 2010![]() For a number of years I used to live opposite Abu Hamza. You didn’t see him much. I remember a Mercedes spilling devoutly robed football fans who had come to watch the game round his place when Iran played the USA in the 1998 World Cup. After 9/11,... Read more... |
Empire of the Seas, BBC TwoFriday, 05 February 2010![]() Dan Snow’s four-part history of the Royal Navy has been in many ways a marvellous thing, and a timely reminder of one of the central planks of our island story. At a moment when various brass hats are openly discussing the possibility of one of the... Read more... |
