history
Written on the Heart, Duchess TheatreTuesday, 24 April 2012
Unlike the National, the RSC has not had a good record of producing exciting new plays in the past 20 years or so. But one exception to this rule is the theatre’s support for the work of David Edgar, whose masterpiece Pentecost was put on by them in... Read more... |
DVD: The Edgar Reitz CollectionSaturday, 07 April 2012
Immediately before Edgar Reitz (pictured below) made Heimat - the 52-hour film sequence begun in 1984 telling 20th-century German history in profound provincial detail - he was washed up, a New German cinema revolutionary who was no longer new,... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? USA: Lionel Richie, BBC OneWednesday, 04 April 2012
“It's about as close to a spiritual awakening as I’ve had in my entire life,” said Lionel Richie. He was standing close to the unmarked grave of his great-grandfather, in the pauper’s section of an overgrown Chattanooga cemetery. Richie began the... Read more... |
She Wolves: England's Early Queens, BBC FourThursday, 08 March 2012
“Throughout our history, women and power have made an uneasy combination." Dr Helen Castor made it clear the path to power depended on more than the right alliances, lineage, and marriage partner. Even if all those were spot on, being female was... Read more... |
Make Bradford British, Channel 4Friday, 02 March 2012
It's a quintessential Channel 4 idea. Take one hot-button issue (racial integration, or lack of it), go to Bradford ("one of Britain's most segregated cities," according to the voiceover), and shove a racially mixed bunch of locals into a thinly-... Read more... |
Empire, BBC OneTuesday, 28 February 2012
The scene is ineffably English. The thock of mallet on ball, the clack of ball through hoop, the gentle sun adding a benediction. A senior gent in natty English threads looks on from the pavilion, a member of this club for 55 years. Everything is... Read more... |
Britain's Greatest Codebreaker, Channel 4Tuesday, 22 November 2011
I had misgivings before watching Britain's Greatest Codebreaker last night on Channel 4: the advertised mix of drama and documentary tends to send a signal that neither half is sufficiently well done. And within a minute, it was clear that this was... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? USA: Steve Buscemi, BBC OneThursday, 17 November 2011
Steve Buscemi says he’s “from the country of Brooklyn”. In the wake of Boardwalk Empire he could have said the empire of Brooklyn. Although the family history disinterred was genuinely strange, this first entry in the new series of Who Do You... Read more... |
The Lion in Winter, Theatre Royal, HaymarketWednesday, 16 November 2011
Don't be misled by the mini-history lesson with which Trevor Nunn's belated London stage premiere of The Lion in Winter begins, a sequence of dates, facts and maps that scroll up a decoratively appointed screen and threaten to turn the sumptuous... Read more... |
Art of America, BBC FourTuesday, 15 November 2011
For dull reasons to do with a dodgy digital box and a very old analogue telly, I can’t tune in to BBC Four during live transmissions, so I either catch up on iPlayer, or (lucky me as a journalist) get to see programmes early. But I’m very glad I can... Read more... |
Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975Friday, 21 October 2011
This is a strangely kaleidoscopic approach to documentary. A selection of recently unearthed footage and interviews which shows the Black Power movement in the USA through the eyes of idealistic Swedish film-makers, now re-edited and framed with the... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - Tracey Emin, BBC OneThursday, 13 October 2011
Tracey Emin once made a tent for which she gained some notoriety. On it, she’d appliquéd the names of everyone she had ever slept with – including, as a child, her beloved Granny Hodgkins. Sadly, the tent, called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963... Read more... |
