tv
Coast, Series 9, BBC TwoWednesday, 16 July 2014
If you like middle-market tabloids, you’ll be into Coast. Like a reliable tide, the show about the sea has been washing up on BBC Two’s shores since 2005. A factual series defined by the ocean main which surrounds the British Isles, it comes with a stock of stories that, unlike the mackerel population, seem in no danger of running out. Read more...
|
Utopia, Series 2, Channel 4Tuesday, 15 July 2014
When the first, and shattering, series of Utopia ended 18 months ago there were alarming suggestions that its ratings weren't good enough to justify a second, even though there was plenty of potential for one. On the other hand if there were to be a series two, could it ever be good enough? Read more... |
Britain's Most Dangerous Songs: Listen to the Banned, BBC FourSaturday, 12 July 2014
The most notorious case of the BBC banning a pop record was the episode of the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" in 1977, which was of course the year of Her Maj's Silver Jubilee. "That was genuinely dangerous," Paul Morley intoned gravely (the record that is, rather than its banning), though as with several of the cases examined here, this one wasn't quite as open and shut as it seemed. Read more... |
The Lance Armstrong Story - Stop at Nothing, BBC Four / The Nation's Favourite Motown Song, ITVMonday, 07 July 2014
The fall of super-cyclist Lance Armstrong is a subject fit for Euripides or Shakespeare. It has also worked pretty well for director Alex Holmes, who managed to round up virtually all the key players caught in Armstrong's vortex of deceit for this unflaggingly gripping documentary [****]. Read more... |
Common, BBC OneMonday, 07 July 2014
Common, Jimmy McGovern’s new BBC One drama about the effects of the joint enterprise law, seems at first sight to lack the topical horsepower of projects like Hillsborough. Read more... |
The Honourable Woman, BBC TwoFriday, 04 July 2014
Janet McTeer has admitted that she had to read Hugo Blick's screenplay for The Honourable Woman three times before she could understand what was going on. Therefore anybody hoping to drop into this as a casual viewer can expect to find the learning curve slippery and featuring a pronounced adverse camber. Read more... |
Rebels of Oz: Germaine, Clive, Barry and Bob, BBC FourWednesday, 02 July 2014
They came, they saw, they conquered. It was the Sixties and London swung, while the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney dozed in a beery torpor. Clive James recalls the fizz of beer pumps as the dreary soundtrack of Aus, while Germaine Greer just wanted to escape to “a place of beauty”. She believed, she said, in the “great Australian ugliness”. No one mentioned the cultural cringe, at least not in the first part of Howard Jacobson’s two-part homage to his four brilliant Australians. Read more... |
The Culture Show: Girls Will Be Girls, BBC TwoTuesday, 01 July 2014
In 40 years’ time, when some suit at the BBC is searching the archives for some suitable footage to illustrate women in music in the early 21st century, will he pull out an image of Miley Cyrus or Rihanna wrapped in fishnets and bondage tape? Read more... |
Arena: The 50 Year Argument, BBC FourMonday, 30 June 2014
Well, I’ll be damned if subscriptions don’t shoot up this summer. This lovingly made paean to the New York Review of Books, directed by Martin Scorsese and his long-time documentary collaborator David Tedeschi, was better than any advert, though I’d hesitate – but only briefly – to say that it was one long advert. Read more... |
Beauty Queen or Bust, Channel 4Friday, 27 June 2014
Wolverhampton today, tomorrow the world. As unlikely as it was, that was the incentive for aspiring prize-winners in this first of three stories from Channel 4 looking at regional beauty pageants which in turn lead to Miss England and beyond. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...
The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...
There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with l...
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader,...
Album: Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Talkin' to...
When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of...
Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages
The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a...
Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...
It’s a sign of the inroads that the term “immersive” has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at the...