documentary
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn GouldSunday, 16 January 2011
The classical-music industry loves dead icons; witness the endless reissuing and remarketing of recordings by Kathleen Ferrier and Jacqueline du Pré. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould died from a stroke at the age of 50 in 1982 and his seminal Bach discs... Read more... |
Come Fly With Me, BBC OneThursday, 06 January 2011
There was always going to come a time when Little Britain had to stop. For a couple of years the heavily milked franchise seemed to be on a tape loop on BBC Three. Its international expansion - to the Greek islands one Christmas, to America for an... Read more... |
True Stories: Rwanda After Genocide, More4Wednesday, 05 January 2011
In 1994 half a million Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered over a period of six weeks. Among them were the four brothers and two sisters of Jean-Pierre Sagahutu. His mother was raped before she too was killed. His father, a doctor, was intercepted on... Read more... |
Film: CatfishThursday, 16 December 2010
Ever since Catfish appeared in the States earlier in the year, debate has been raging about its bona fides. On the face of it an ingenious documentary playing smartly with the potential and pitfalls of social networking and the nature of personal... Read more... |
The Savoy, ITV1Monday, 13 December 2010
Once upon a time, just before Lord Reith began permanent rotation in his place of rest, there was a hideous botchjob of a television genre known as the docusoap. It wasn’t quite documentary and it wasn’t quite soap. It was scriptless drama with “... Read more... |
My Father, the Bomb and Me, BBC FourFriday, 10 December 2010
It seems like an aeon ago that we had people who dared to make television series with names like Civilisation or The Ascent of Man. The notion of TV as a forum for vigorous intellectual debate and for taking the philosophical measure of human... Read more... |
Enemies of the PeopleThursday, 09 December 2010
Two members of Thet Sambath’s immediate family were murdered during the Khmer Rouge’s time in power in Cambodia. His father was killed when he objected to the organisation's seizure of his property, while his mother was then forced into marriage... Read more... |
Operation Mincemeat, BBC TwoSunday, 05 December 2010
They have period names in the foreign country we call the past. In last night’s documentary about a brilliant wartime trick practised upon Hitler, we came across a coroner called Sir Bentley Purchase, a love interest called Peternel Hankins and a... Read more... |
LemmyWednesday, 01 December 2010
As Ozzy Osbourne puts it, “He’s just Lemmy. You just take him or you fucking don’t, and he doesn’t give a flying shit whether you do or not.” It’s this irreducible Lemmyness of Lemmy which lies at the core of the gnarled heavy metaller’s mystique.... Read more... |
Storyville: Mandelson - The Real PM?, BBC FourWednesday, 24 November 2010
The title could have used a bit more work, I'd have thought. No, Peter Mandelson was never "the real PM", and won't be now. As for the real Peter Mandelson, there is no evidence that any such mythical beast exists. And why hadn't Lord Mandelson... Read more... |
True Stories: Joan Rivers - A Piece of Work, More4Wednesday, 10 November 2010
This bit was at the end, but it might as well have been at the beginning. Or, really, just bannered across the bottom of the screen all the way through: "I am a performer. That is my life. That is what I am. That's it."Thus Joan Rivers explained her... Read more... |
A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War BritainTuesday, 09 November 2010
An English teacher in a brand-new Hertfordshire secondary school is about to lose his rag. “You said ‘relaxed, like,’” he storms at a boy. “Why like? Like what? Why do you use that expression? What does it mean?” This is 1962. It’s a scene from Our... Read more... |
