TV drama
Call the Midwife, Series 3, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014
If it ain't broke don't fix it, and writer Heidi Thomas obviously has no intention of tinkering with the Call the Midwife formula. Virtually nothing has changed, except that there's a new character, Sister Winifred, while Chummy (Miranda Hart) is... Read more... |
Timeshift - How to Be Sherlock Holmes, BBC Four / Sherlock, BBC OneSunday, 12 January 2014
As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes. The... Read more... |
Hostages, Channel 4Sunday, 12 January 2014
Having brought us to the end of Homeland, Channel 4 are hoping lightning will strike twice by introducing another American series based on an Israeli original. Where Homeland was the American version of Hatufim, Hostages is derived from Bnei Aruba,... Read more... |
The Bridge, Series 2, BBC Four / Hinterland, BBC One WalesSunday, 05 January 2014
Why has Nordic noir been such an addictive novelty? Yes the plots are great, the locations moodily cool, the flat dialogue enigmatic. But in the end it’s all about gender. The detective who is a genius at work but clueless at life – we’ve seen it... Read more... |
Agatha Christie's Marple: Endless Night, ITVMonday, 30 December 2013
“Her most devastating surprise ever.” Thus spake The Guardian, a quote happily slapped across the cover of the first paperback edition of Agatha Christie’s 1967 thriller Endless Night. While I wouldn’t go quite that far – that honour goes to her... Read more... |
Moonfleet, Sky1Sunday, 29 December 2013
They've had Ray Winstone all over Sky this Christmas, gamely plugging this new dramatisation of J Meade Falkner's rumbustious crowd-pleaser, Moonfleet. Ray's theme is that we urgently need more quality drama with broad appeal on TV and shouldn't... Read more... |
Television: 10 Top Performances from 2013Friday, 27 December 2013
No definitive answers to what was "the best" of 2013 of course, and I daresay opinions will differ wildly. For instance, despite the plaudits showered on it elsewhere, I felt that Broadchurch stretched itself too thin after showing initial promise.... Read more... |
Sifting the Evidence: the Great Train Robbery, 50 Years OnTuesday, 17 December 2013
There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train... Read more... |
Ripper Street, Series 2 Finale, BBC OneTuesday, 17 December 2013
Though greeted ambivalently when it made its debut at the end of 2012, Ripper Street has looked increasingly like TV's undervalued secret weapon as it has surged purposefully through this second series. Maybe the title was misjudged, suggesting it... Read more... |
Borgen, Series 3, BBC FourSunday, 17 November 2013
Sidse Babett Knudsen, alias the absurdly photogenic Danish Statsminister Birgitte Nyborg, provoked gasps at the Nordicana festival in London last June when she revealed that she was no longer Prime Minister in series three. And indeed, as the... Read more... |
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, ITVThursday, 14 November 2013
Inevitably, an aura of fin-de-siècle gloom hung heavily over this final Poirot. So daunting was the prospect of terminating his 25-year career-defining stint as Belgium's finest (albeit imaginary) export that David Suchet insisted on shooting the... Read more... |
Ripper Street, Series Two, BBC OneTuesday, 29 October 2013
Proof that the BBC’s love of gritty realism is not solely the province of Luther and similar modern-day urban crime dramas comes just minutes into the second series of Ripper Street, before the credits even roll. In the East End of London a police... Read more... |
