TV drama
Orange Is the New Black, Season 5, Netflix review - counterpoint in a three-day prison riotFriday, 14 July 2017
Rippling outward from the initial story of a seemingly nice WASP woman who finds herself having to adapt in a women's prison, Orange Is the New Black quickly developed into the most multilayered, almost indigestibly rich of American TV dramas. By... Read more... |
GLOW, Netflix review - not quite comedy or dramaThursday, 13 July 2017
How much plotting went into GLOW? It has been gussied up by the people who brought you the jumbo Netflix hit Orange Is the New Black. Both shows are based on a true story and feature women of all ethnicities bitching and slapping in a contained... Read more... |
Broken, BBC One series finale review - Seán Bean's quiet immensityWednesday, 05 July 2017
The Catholic Church hasn’t enjoyed a good press on screen lately. Nuns punished Irishwomen for their pregnancies in Philomena. Priests interfered with altar boys in Spotlight. And in The Young Pope a Vatican fixated on conservatism and casuistry... Read more... |
Melvyn Bragg on TV, BBC Two review – too many talking heads, too little actionSunday, 02 July 2017
Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time. Broadcasting juggernaut Lord Bragg would undertake a sweeping survey of the way that television has transformed our lives and reflected British society in the last 70-odd years, soaring over dramas... Read more... |
Chance, Universal review – Hugh Laurie is reborn as a film-noir shrinkWednesday, 21 June 2017
Hugh Laurie, in his new role of forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, tells us that he works with those who are “mutilated by life”, and we soon see that Chance himself falls into that category. He’s in the midst of a divorce, he only sees his... Read more... |
Ripper Street, BBC Two, Series 5 review – apocalypse looms in Victorian WhitechapelTuesday, 20 June 2017
There has always been an air of incipient doom hovering over Ripper Street, since the show is more of a laboratory of lost souls than a mere detective drama. Now, as it embarks on its fifth and final season, there’s every reason to suppose that the... Read more... |
Murdered For Being Different, BBC Three review - unbearable but unmissableMonday, 19 June 2017
Heaven alone knows we've pressing anxieties enough to preoccupy us, but if you have the emotional bandwidth to accommodate more, the iPlayer can oblige. Available now on BBC Three is the latest in what now becomes a trilogy of heartrending dramas... Read more... |
Riviera, Sky Atlantic review - codswallop on the Côte d'AzurFriday, 16 June 2017
W Somerset Maugham, who knew a thing or two about the dark side, summed up the Riviera as “a sunny place for shady people”. On the evidence of this first episode, Riviera is a funny place for shitty people.The first few minutes flung us... Read more... |
Fearless, ITV review - Helen McCrory lights up dense conspiracy thrillerTuesday, 13 June 2017
Emma Banville is almost too good to be true: a human rights lawyer who houses Syrian refugees, wins the most hopeless cases of wrongful conviction, won’t be bullied by anyone – coppers, prison wardens, the system. OK she smokes, presumably for the... Read more... |
10 Questions for The Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy KingslandMonday, 12 June 2017
Formed in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneered groundbreaking innovation in music making, using anything and everything to create new textures and tones to satisfy eager TV producers looking for otherwordly... Read more... |
The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mistMonday, 12 June 2017
There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the... Read more... |
Poldark, Series 3, BBC One review - tempestuous passions and pantomime villains ride againMonday, 12 June 2017
Is it always the same bit of Cornish clifftop they gallop along in Poldark? Anyway here it was again, raising the curtain on the third series. As the camera flew in over a gaggle of squawking seagulls spiralling above the foaming surf crashing on... Read more... |
