crime
Luther, Series 2, BBC OneWednesday, 15 June 2011
A year ago when Luther battered down the door like a wailing banshee in bovver boots on day release, it was all a bit underwhelming. People shrugged and wondered whether Idris Elba was condemned to roam in eternal script limbo. They weren’t at all... Read more... |
DVD: Kiss Me DeadlyFriday, 10 June 2011
AI Bezzerides, who scripted Kiss Me Deadly (1955) for director Robert Aldrich, thought Mickey Spillane’s pulp novel was trash. Spillane, offended that Bezzerides changed so much, couldn’t understand why the film became a cult favorite in France; one... Read more... |
Point BlankThursday, 09 June 2011
You could reduce the theme of Fred Cavayé's Point Blank to "man races to save kidnapped wife", but that wouldn't give you the full flavour of the movie's remorseless pace or devilishly wrought internal mechanism, or the quality of its performances.... Read more... |
Case Histories, BBC OneSunday, 05 June 2011
Thanks to her evergreen bestseller Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson can call on an army of fans to buy her work whenever it appears in print. Its debut on screen is, perhaps, another matter. Will they buy the BBC’s rendition of Case... Read more... |
Scott & Bailey, ITV1Sunday, 29 May 2011
We all enjoy the moment when the detective loses his rag and lunges across the desk to grab the suspect by the lapels, but such scenes are in short supply in this new female crime-fighters series. Instead, the interrogative approach of “the new... Read more... |
Julia's EyesWednesday, 18 May 2011
Feminism it certainly isn’t, though it is bizarrely refreshing to observe that the heroine fleeing a maniac in a state of comely undress is in her mid-forties. It might be baby steps rather than huge strides of progress but nevertheless, The... Read more... |
The Shadow Line, BBC TwoFriday, 06 May 2011
It’s got more derivations than a dictionary. The Wire has been mentioned in dispatches, as have British conspiracy dramas such as State of Play and Edge of Darkness (in which something is rotten etc). And talking of Denmark, it comes along with... Read more... |
Vera, ITV1Sunday, 01 May 2011
ITV1 really, really loves that succulent two-hour slot in the middle of Sunday evening, and anything that goes in there has the legacy of Morse, Lewis, Frost, Miss Marple et al to live up to. The latest cunning plan for Detective Sunday is to... Read more... |
London Road, National TheatreThursday, 14 April 2011
The murders of five prostitutes in Ipswich: it’s hard to imagine a less likely subject for a musical, not least because the memory of the crimes of forklift-truck driver Steve Wright, committed in late 2006, is still so horribly fresh. But there is... Read more... |
Martina Cole's The Runaway, Sky 1Thursday, 31 March 2011
According to her website, Martina Cole is "the person who tells it like it really is". If it's really like this dramatisation of her 1997 novel The Runaway, it's unrelentingly brutal, squalid and frightening, a televisual blow to the head from a... Read more... |
Silk, Series Finale, BBC OneTuesday, 29 March 2011
Will Silk make it to series two, or will it feel the wrath of BBC One's mad axeman, Danny Cohen? The former, we fervently hope. Despite some implausible incidents and occasionally silly plotlines, Peter Moffat's battling-barristers drama reached... Read more... |
DVD: London BoulevardThursday, 24 March 2011
Having amasssed bankable screenwriting kudos for Edge of Darkness and The Departed, William Monahan made his writer/director debut with London Boulevard, a reworking of Ken Bruen's novel burnished with useful marquee glitz from headliners Colin... Read more... |
