drama
Glasgow Girls, BBC ThreeWednesday, 16 July 2014![]() A few months ago, Glasgow Girls - Cora Bissett and David Greig’s 2013 musical based on the true story of seven teenage girls from Drumchapel, Glasgow and their campaign to end the forced removal of school-age asylum seekers - returned to the city’s... Read more... |
Shutters, Park TheatreSunday, 13 July 2014It's a woman’s world at Park Theatre, where an all-female company tackles three American shorts that place the private feminine experience under a microscope. Jack Thorpe Baker’s casting yields mixed results, emphasising the shrewd analysis of... Read more... |
Common, BBC OneMonday, 07 July 2014![]() Common, Jimmy McGovern’s new BBC One drama about the effects of the joint enterprise law, seems at first sight to lack the topical horsepower of projects like Hillsborough. McGovern doesn’t disappoint, however, crafting from the apparent obscurity... Read more... |
Murdered By My Boyfriend, BBC ThreeMonday, 23 June 2014![]() The BBC might have convinced itself that the only thing that will change in the way it caters to the youth market next autumn is the method of delivery, but Murdered By My Boyfriend makes the case for retaining BBC Three as a channel that can be... Read more... |
Of Horses and MenTuesday, 10 June 2014![]() Twelve minutes into the Icelandic film Of Horses and Men something occurs on screen which was obviously going to happen, but actually seeing it happen is astonishing. It’s something which would normally either occur off screen or be alluded to. Of... Read more... |
LockeMonday, 14 April 2014![]() The first line of his Wikipedia entry says that Tom Hardy "is an English actor" (he was born in Hammersmith), but for the 84 minute duration of Locke I was fully prepared to accept that he came from Llangollen or Llareggub. The film's narrative... Read more... |
DVD: White DogTuesday, 18 March 2014![]() Once in his stride as a director, Samuel Fuller never shied away from the controversial. The mental-hospital set Shock Corridor, from 1963, prefigured One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and touched on the arms race, incest, racism and the Korean War. A... Read more... |
My Mad Fat Diary, Series 2, E4Tuesday, 18 February 2014![]() By the end of its first series, My Mad Fat Diary had departed far enough from memoirist Rae Earl’s frank, funny source material that the adaptation taking on a life of its own shouldn’t have been a cause for concern. Still, there’s always that... Read more... |
DVD: WingsFriday, 14 February 2014![]() The silent-era Wings is not a subtle film. Director William A. Wellman’s action-packed World War One tale of loyalty, love and war is also, at just short of two-and-a-half hours, long. At the time of its release in 1927, the film news bulletin Movie... Read more... |
DVD: The Selfish GiantTuesday, 28 January 2014![]() The DVD release of this devastating film brings its impact even closer. Watching it at home is a squirm-inducing experience which brings moments where it’s hard to fight the urge to leave the room or put your hands in front of your face. The... Read more... |
Mr Selfridge, Series 2, ITVSunday, 19 January 2014We return to the dramatised Selfridges five years after the opening of the store that changed the face of British shopping - and yet, despite proving those who doomed his enterprise to failure wrong, the smile on its eponymous owner’s face is as... Read more... |
The Musketeers, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014![]() It’s costume drama meets adventure story, it’s got smouldering manhood and heaving-bosomed women with sex, swordfights, politicking and even beautifully lit Prague doubling for 17th-century Paris, but the question hanging over the BBC’s lavish new... Read more... |
