mon 14/07/2025

drama

Antigone, National Theatre

Although some contemporary plays — notably Posh and 13 — have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles’s Antigone (dated about 441BC) have anything to say to us today? How can it be of our time...

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The Bridge: Series Finale, BBC Four

It ended where it began, between Copenhagen and Malmö along the Öresund bridge. The journey back to square one took in issues of homelessness, mental health, immigration and child labour. Drug abuse, national identity, family break-up and the...

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She Monkeys

She Monkeys comes with a “note of intent” from its Swedish director Lisa Aschan. “She Monkeys plays with rules that surround human behaviour. I want to explore society’s contradictions by allowing young women to perform brutal actions. To show these...

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Original Wallander films released on DVD

The first six film adaptations of the Wallander books by Sweden’s’ Henning Manuel come to DVD on 11 June. Made before Britain embraced Scandinavian dramas The Killing, Borgen and, most recently, The Bridge they are essential parts of the Nordic Noir...

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Kate Bush, Grayson Perry and Michael Frayn triumph in South Bank Sky Arts Awards

Surprises galore at Wednesday's South Bank Sky Arts Awards, hosted by Melvyn Bragg  at London's Dorchester hotel. Kate Bush won the Pop Music category for her album 50 Words for Snow, trouncing Adele and PJ Harvey. The RSC's Matilda pinched the...

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Braquo, FX

The first series of the French cops gone-to-pot drama ended with Lieutenant Eddy Caplan about to blow the head off his nemesis Serge Lemoine. Offing him was supposed to solve all Caplan and his team’s problems. Unfortunately, Lemoine was fitted with...

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DVD: Tuesday, After Christmas

Just as you think you’ve got Tuesday, After Christmas pegged as an Eric Rohmer-style relationship drama, it gradually becomes clear it’s something else. The impact left by this ambiguous, non-judgmental examination of the emotional crisis affecting...

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Dexter, Series 6, FX

Now on its third showrunner and entering its sixth season, it’s perhaps not a surprise that this once pitch-black drama, centring on a disturbed forensic analyst who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer, has lost its edge. The latest episode...

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DVD: Snowtown

John Bunting is currently serving 11 life sentences. He was Australia’s serial killer. A murderous manipulator masquerading as a vigilante, he brought young people, their family members and a disenfranchised suburban community into his madness....

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Paula Milne on writing White Heat

Each decade is a response to and reaction again the previous decade. I’m a child of the Sixties, which were clearly to some extent a response to the post-war austerity of the Fifties. You felt the presence of the war. It was the elephant in the room...

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Dirk Gently, BBC Four

The great problem for holistic detective Dirk Gently is that he lives in a post-Moffat/Gattis-Sherlock era. How can any private investigator shine after the wit, intrigue, technology and bromance of that show? It helps that Gently, created by...

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Kidnap and Ransom, Series 2, ITV1

Can any drama work in which half the dialogue takes place by cellphone? Last night a new dose of Kidnap and Ransom gave this thorny question a thorough workout. Trevor Eve, bestubbled, gravelly and never very comedic, is back doing his Trevor Eve...

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