humour
Album: Kurupt FM - The Greatest Hits (Part 1)Thursday, 19 August 2021
People Just Do Nothing is a mockumentary BBC TV series, now ended, about fictional Brentford pirate radio crew Kurupt FM. It’s also a comedy based entirely on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in that the humour derives from the worldview of all the key... Read more... |
Wonderville, Palace Theatre review - magic and illusion family showThursday, 05 August 2021
Variety is a form of entertainment most usually seen on Saturday night television these days, but Wonderville is an attempt to bring it back into the West End. It's mostly a magic and illusion show, with a hefty slice of comedy, a bit of song and... Read more... |
Riders of Justice review - revenge, coincidence and the meaning of lifeThursday, 22 July 2021
All events are products of a series of preceding events. Or is life just a chain of coincidences? And if so, what’s the point in anything? Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen’s brilliantly inventive, genre-busting black comedy starts with a bicycle... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe review - a blast of colour from our post-vaccine futureSaturday, 29 May 2021
A little less than two years after Sean Holmes’s kick-ass Latin American carnival-style A Midsummer Night’s Dream erupted at the side of the Thames, it has returned to a very different world. It’s no longer a natural expression of the kind of... Read more... |
Berlinale 2021: Petite Maman review – magical musings on the parent-child relationshipSaturday, 06 March 2021
Hot on the heels of her 2019 triumph Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma’s fifth feature continues a perfect track record; this is yet another gorgeous and perceptive film, told from a determinedly female perspective but with a wisdom... Read more... |
Rams review – softhearted bush-loving dramaSaturday, 06 February 2021
Kiwi and Aussie screen legends Sam Neill and Michael Caton have teamed up in this heartfelt and humorous remake of Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 Icelandic original. The template of Hákonarson’s story has been transplanted but all the details and fillings... Read more... |
Album: Paul Leary - Born StupidSaturday, 06 February 2021
“I could have been a doctor or a lawyer, playing golf with my rich friends at the club” bemoans Paul Leary on the title track of his first solo album in 30 years. That, however, would have deprived the rest of us of the warped genius of the Butthole... Read more... |
Baby Done review - romcom done rightThursday, 21 January 2021
Romcoms. We all know the tried and tested formula: immature guy, uptight girl, they meet, they like each other, hate each other, and end up in love. It’s as reliable as it is unrealistic, and sometimes it takes a film like Baby Done to remind you... Read more... |
Taskmaster, Channel 4 review - comedy show makes seamless transferFriday, 16 October 2020
After nine successful series, a Bafta and an Emmy nomination, Taskmaster has moved from Dave to Channel 4 – amusingly, the broadcaster that its creator Alex Horne first took it to but which turned it down. It has made the transition seamlessly – ie... Read more... |
Saint Maud review - creepy and strangely topical psychological horrorThursday, 08 October 2020
It only takes a few seconds of Saint Maud – dripping blood, a dead body contorted on a gurney, a young woman’s deranged face staring at an insect on the ceiling, an industrial clamour more likely to score the gates of hell than the pearly... Read more... |
Eternal Beauty review - imagination in every frameFriday, 02 October 2020
Barring a few outliers, British indies tend to follow the same formula: serious subjects told seriously. Whether it’s a council estate, a rural farm, or a seaside town, you can always rely on that trademark tension and realism we Brits do so well.... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: author Katharina VolckmerSunday, 30 August 2020
Katharina Volckmer’s début novel The Appointment follows one woman as she vents her frustrations, confusions and regrets to her doctor during a lengthy appointment in London. Ranging through ideas from sex to Nazism, religion to technology, this... Read more... |
