documentary
Imagine: The Trouble with Tolstoy, BBC OneMonday, 04 April 2011
Trouble? What trouble? There may be the odd reader who doesn't get past the Austerlitz sequence of War and Peace, and many who don't brave the master's last big novel questioning church and state, Resurrection, but that's their problem, not Tolstoy'... Read more... |
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... |
Cave of Forgotten DreamsThursday, 24 March 2011
The first thing that must be said is the paintings, captured by Herzog and his crew, are breathtaking beyond description. Among the animals depicted with remarkable clarity are mammoths, horses, bison, rhinoceros, ibex, lions and the only known... Read more... |
Dispatches: Train Journeys from Hell, Channel 4/ Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Sky 1Monday, 21 March 2011
It would take the cunning of the insane to invent the British railway network. Privatised 18 years ago, it offers the worst of all worlds - persistent overcrowding and cancellations, outdated rolling stock and fares rising vertiginously as... Read more... |
Benda Bilili!Saturday, 12 March 2011
On first hearing about Staff Benda Bilili - a Congolese band partly made up of paraplegics – I felt a little uneasy at the prospect of reviewing them. The last thing that one wants as a (hopefully) trusted critic is to feel compromised by an... Read more... |
Great British Food Revival, BBC TwoWednesday, 09 March 2011
If you know which side your bread is buttered on, you should be up in arms about the white fluffy stuff you’ve been hoodwinked into putting into your toaster, implied a positively evangelical Michel Roux Jr in this first of a five-part series on the... Read more... |
Agony & Ecstasy: A Year With the English National Ballet, BBC FourWednesday, 09 March 2011
You thought Black Swan was a nightmare depiction of the ballet world? Now watch Agony & Ecstasy: A Year With English National Ballet, Part 1 and squirm. Compare Natalie Portman’s tormenting balletmaster with ENB’s Derek Deane, as each of them... Read more... |
Civilization: Is the West History?, Channel 4Sunday, 06 March 2011
The two are not wildly far apart in their appreciation of the wonder of the West; indeed, Ferguson's accompanying book is subtitled The West and the Rest. Clark saw the peak of culture in the judiciously spent gold of the Medici, while Ferguson... Read more... |
His & HersSunday, 06 March 2011
Ken Wardrop is a young Irish film-maker who has been winning awards since his days at the National Film School in Dublin. His & Hers, his feature debut, is no exception: it won the World Documentary Cinematography award at last year’s Sundance... 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... |
