documentary
How To Live With Women, BBC ThreeMonday, 28 February 2011
Meet Tom. He’s an Essex geezer with all the charm of a used toothpick, whose idea of romance is a cheeseburger on a bench in the Sainsbury’s car park. He can’t hold down a job, spends all girlfriend Cherelle’s money down the bookies, and expects her... Read more... |
Wild at Heart, ITV1/ McQueen and I, More4Monday, 28 February 2011
Now nearing the end of its sixth series, Wild at Heart has quietly parked itself in the middle of the Sunday-evening schedules, where it goes about its task of hoovering up ratings with single-minded efficiency. Last week's debut of South Riding on... Read more... |
Ross Kemp: Extreme World, Sky 1Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Ross Kemp won a Bafta for his documentary about being on the frontline in Afghanistan, so perhaps I should begin by saying all due respect, and all that, but how much can you ratchet up the hardman image before it threatens to dissolve into self-... Read more... |
Inside JobWednesday, 16 February 2011
Inside Inside Job is an interesting film struggling to get out. Sadly, one has to sit through two hours of Financial Meltdown 101 to see it. Narrated by Matt Damon in his serious voice (and if you're anything like me, you'll always be thinking of... Read more... |
Afghan Cricket Club: Out of the Ashes, BBC FourMonday, 07 February 2011
At first sight, “Afghanistan cricket team” might be labled along with “The kosher guide to cooking pork” or “How to keep your promises, by N Clegg”. But in 2008, Taj Malik, an Afghan player passionate about the game, decided to try to take his... Read more... |
Ronald Reagan: American Idol, BBC FourSunday, 06 February 2011
Aptly for a programme whose title invokes a show which is all style, no substance, the subject of Ronald Reagan: American Idol is image. What was Reagan really like? How much of his career as a Hollywood star did he carry into office? And why... Read more... |
Great White Silence with James Cracknell, DiscoveryMonday, 31 January 2011
For a while in the 1990s, the NASDAQ of polar exploration knocked Scott off his plinth and installed Shackleton as Britain’s favourite Antarctic hero. To a modern sensibility, survival seemed a more laudable pursuit than sacrifice. Better a live... Read more... |
Men on the BridgeThursday, 27 January 2011
As a child I lived for a while near the footings in Ortaköy of the Bosphorus Bridge, which was being constructed over the breathtaking straits of Istanbul. Our life as oil expatriates was many worlds away from the skinny hawkers, whistling traffic... Read more... |
Interview: Film Director Beeban KidronFriday, 21 January 2011
It’s a fairly safe bet that when director Beeban Kidron made her first film, the documentary Carry Greenham Home (1983), she never envisaged that 20 years later she’d be directing a whopping great blockbuster about a Chardonnay-swigging young woman’... Read more... |
Storyville: Pablo's Hippos, BBC FourMonday, 17 January 2011
It’s not so much the children of mad celebs I feel sorry for as their animals. The private zoo stuffed with exotic, non-indigenous wildlife is a sure sign of money, power and hubris run riot. The tigers and chimps at the Neverland ranch became... Read more... |
Horizon: What is Reality?, BBC TwoMonday, 17 January 2011
Horizon took a funny turn this week. The new series started off gently enough – there was a nostalgic look back at 60 years of science on the box, then an exploration as to what makes us clever (the fun this entailed when vaguely well-known people... Read more... |
Gordon Ramsay: Shark Bait/ Dispatches: Fish Unwrapped, Channel 4Monday, 17 January 2011
With such weighty gastronauts as Heston Blumenthal, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall all aboard Channel 4's Big Fish Fight jamboree, Gordon Ramsay obviously couldn't bear to be left standing on the quay. In fact, with Gordon Ramsay:... Read more... |
