crime
Single Father, BBC One/ Thorne: Sleepyhead, Sky1Monday, 11 October 2010![]() The American networks have so far been able to resist the stick-insectish charms of David Tennant, but the BBC would probably start up a new channel just for him if he asked them. In this new four-parter, his comeback appearance after handing over... Read more... |
TV Cops and KillersFriday, 08 October 2010![]() If you can’t play a cop or a mass murderer, steer clear of the acting profession. That would be the logical inference from the swarms of cops’n’killers series cramming the TV schedules. You’d think we’d have had enough, what with Luther, all the CSI... Read more... |
Mr NiceFriday, 08 October 2010![]() Howard Marks was a pothead Errol Flynn, living a life of remarkable escapades and hair's-breadth escapes. A Welsh working-class Oxford graduate in nuclear physics and philosophy, he’d be fascinating company even if he wasn’t once the world’s most... Read more... |
DCI Banks: Aftermath, ITV1Monday, 04 October 2010![]() ”The domestic” over at 27, The Hill turns out to be decidedly undomestic. The murderer's basement lair so resembles the blood-splattered dens of every other serial killer that has ever graced the big and small screen (right down to the sickly green... Read more... |
TakersThursday, 30 September 2010![]() Over there is the gang who give the movie its title (though it was originally going to be called Bone Deep), because they take stuff, mostly money. They’re a suave and dude-ish bunch, headed by Idris Elba exuding his usual intimidating air of... Read more... |
The TownTuesday, 21 September 2010![]() Welcome to Charlestown, a Boston neighbourhood of just one square mile that has produced more bank robbers than anywhere else in America. Here crime is a “trade” passed down from father to son, and the height of ambition is to serve your inevitable... Read more... |
Dark Blue, Five USAWednesday, 15 September 2010![]() Jerry Bruckheimer’s production stable has already given us a lifetime’s supply of law-enforcement stories. The hydra-headed CSI franchise has become more ubiquitous than I Love Lucy in its heyday, while Cold Case and the FBI missing-persons yarns of... Read more... |
The Musical Pygmies of the Central African RepublicSaturday, 04 September 2010![]() As there's something of a forest theme this weekend on theartsdesk, with the Royal Opera House's If-A-Tree festival curated by Joanna McGregor with Scanner, and a report from this year's Borneo Rainforest World Music Festival, and here, a diary of... Read more... |
I Can't Stop Stealing, BBC ThreeFriday, 27 August 2010![]() As a journalist with a sense of pride about what we reptiles can achieve, sometimes I shudder at the awfulness of what passes for journalism. The licence fee in theory confers on the BBC some moral purpose higher than that of the base commercial... Read more... |
The Raoul Moat Tapes: Inside the Mind of a Killer, Channel 4Thursday, 19 August 2010![]() After going on his murderous rampage earlier this summer, the police hunt for Raoul Moat was given rolling news coverage. Moat had critically injured his ex-partner Samantha Stobbart, he had murdered her new boyfriend and he had gone on to shoot and... Read more... |
Vexed, BBC TwoMonday, 16 August 2010![]() Lucy Punch – what a great name for a comedian (or a female boxer). Unfortunately that is the only thing that’s great about Vexed, a new comedy drama written by Howard Overman, creator of Channel 4’s perky ASBO (RIP) superpower fantasy Misfits. His... Read more... |
Stealing Shakespeare, BBC OneFriday, 30 July 2010![]() “Well! It is now publique,... Read more... |
