TV drama
Gomorrah, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - there will be bloodFriday, 02 February 2018
No doubt McMafia has its strengths, but it’s like a mug of Horlicks compared to the grappa-with-aviation-fuel blast of Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic). The Naples-set organised crime drama takes no prisoners. It gives no quarter, and expects none.As a... Read more... |
Inside No 9, series 4, BBC Two review - laughter in the darkWednesday, 24 January 2018
Talk about laughter in the dark. With every successive episode, the fourth series of Inside No 9 (BBC Two) has perceptibly turned a shade blacker. "Zanzibar" was a festive farce mashing up half the plots of Shakespeare from Macbeth to A Comedy of... Read more... |
Rebecka Martinsson: Arctic Murders, More4 review - Swedish sleuth is a cold caseSaturday, 20 January 2018
Sara Lund and Saga Norén have a lot to answer for. Their adventures in the murk of murder as they grapple with their own dysfunctional psychology entranced audiences who don’t speak a scrap of Danish or Swedish. The search has since gone on for... Read more... |
Britannia, Sky Atlantic review - Druids, sex and sorceryFriday, 19 January 2018
What did the Romans do for us? On the evidence of new drama Britannia, they pillaged, murdered and tortured, but also found themselves mesmerised by the psychedelic Druid magic that hovered over our ancient land like fairy dust.Creator Jez... Read more... |
Before We Die, Channel 4 review - underwhelming and unengaging Scandi noirWednesday, 17 January 2018
The new import is the latest procedural from Scandinavia, this time focusing on Stockholm’s biker gangs. The first episode aired Tuesday night, with the rest of the series available on All4 now. In the age of the boxset binge, this availability is... Read more... |
Kiri, Channel 4 review - transracial adoption drama muddies the watersThursday, 11 January 2018
“I’m black – I need to find out how black people live.” So reasoned Kiri, sitting in the back seat of the car driven by her social services case worker. She was on the way from her prospective adopters, a white middle-class couple who already... Read more... |
Hard Sun, BBC One review - cops versus the end of the worldSunday, 07 January 2018
Fans of Luther will be familiar with writer Neil Cross’s fondness for hideous violence, shocking plot-twists and macabre humour, as well as characterful London locations, and happily they’re all present and correct in this new sci-fi thriller. Cross... Read more... |
Girlfriends, ITV review - Kay Mellor helps the middle-agedThursday, 04 January 2018
You know where you are with Kay Mellor. Somewhere in the north, among a group of people brought together by pregnancy or prison, weight or, as in the case of the recent Love, Lies and Records, work. With Girlfriends (ITV), the common denominator is... Read more... |
Best of 2017: TVSunday, 31 December 2017
Young people will laugh incredulously when you tell them that once upon a time, there was only one television channel in Britain. Now we've lost count, and as even the Queen pointed out in her Christmas broadcast, many of her subjects would now be... Read more... |
Spiral, Series 6, BBC Four review - grime pays in the City of LightSunday, 31 December 2017
We’ve seen some “interesting” series filling BBC Four’s celebrated Saturday evening slot recently, which if nothing else have prompted plenty of below-the-line discussion. Happily, we can now turn our backs on all that and hail the return of the ace... Read more... |
Eric, Ernie and Me, BBC Four review - he brought them sunshineSaturday, 30 December 2017
To misquote Marx (Karl, not Groucho), comedy repeats itself, the first time as farce, the second time as a tragedy. The early days of broadcasting bred comedians whose work lives on in the nation’s marrow. But being Frankie Howerd or Kenneth... Read more... |
The Miniaturist, BBC One review - a lovely supernatural soapThursday, 28 December 2017
Simon Schama called the Netherlands’ century of success an "embarrassment of riches". The thrust of Jessie Burton’s lavishly hyped debut novel The Miniaturist is that the Dutch felt guilty about their good fortune, and denied themselves the right to... Read more... |
