tv
Toast, BBC OneThursday, 30 December 2010
All the time I was watching Toast last night, based on Nigel Slater’s memoir of his early years, I was wondering whether it was filmed for the benefit of the audience or of Slater himself. The final scene (no spoiler – we know how this story ends) where the young Slater ran away to join the kitchen at the Savoy was revealing: the head chef who gave him a job was played by Nigel Slater,... Read more...
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Year Out/Year In: Television on DemandWednesday, 29 December 2010
“Television is pretty awful at the moment,” said Eileen Atkins the other week. “Is that because I'm getting old?” Age wouldn’t dare to wither Dame Eileen, of course, who has just bounced back in fine sparky fettle in the BBC's remake of Upstairs Downstairs. Read more... |
Agatha Christie's Marple: The Secret of Chimneys, ITV1Monday, 27 December 2010
If there’s one thing the British love on television at Christmas time, it’s a period drama, and even better, a period mystery. So what joy when there’s a bit of sleuthing by Agatha Christie's yin to Hercule Poirot’s yang, the eagle-eyed wise old bird Miss Marple, in The Secret of Chimneys. Miss Marple (Julia McKenzie) is asked by Lady Virginia Revel (Charlotte Salt), the daughter of a dead cousin (what a lot of those the old girl appears to have), to be part of a lavish... Read more... |
Upstairs Downstairs, BBC OneMonday, 27 December 2010
Thirty-five years after Rose Buck took what she thought was her final nostalgic stroll through the empty rooms of 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, where she had served the Bellamy family for four decades, Jean Marsh has brought Rose back home in the BBC’s three-part remake of Upstairs Downstairs. Also aboard for this much-anticipated revival is Eileen Atkins, who was Marsh’s co-creator of the original... Read more... |
When Harvey Met Bob, BBC TwoSunday, 26 December 2010
At one point in Joe Dunlop’s Boy's Own adventure-style dramatisation of the events leading up to Live Aid, concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith asked Bob Geldof: “Why are you doing it, that’s the question?” I’ve interviewed Geldof on a number of occasions and there’s no doubting either the sincerity or enduring nature of his commitment to Band Aid. I’m not sure, however, that I or anyone else, and certainly not this film, has ever quite got to the bottom of Goldsmith's question. Why... Read more... |
Whistle and I'll Come to You, BBC TwoSaturday, 25 December 2010
Television has been very good to MR James. The originator of the “antiquarian ghost story” - his plots often hinge on some stumbled-upon medieval relic - his spooky tales are certainly vivid and engaging. Yet he himself professed to never taking them terribly seriously: they were written as “entertainments", to be read out loud to a convivial circle of admiring undergraduates during his years as a Cambridge don. Read more... |
Imagine: Ray Davies, Imaginary Man, BBC OneWednesday, 22 December 2010
"Compared to the way I feel now", said Ray Davies 50 minutes in, “having a nervous breakdown was a jaunt.” His voice was even, matter of fact. He didn’t look distressed, merely appeared to be stating what he thinks is obvious. Julian Temple’s documentary about The Kinks’s leader and songwriter was packed with such moments – revealing and so open that it was impossible not to be affected by Davies’s low-key passion. This assured portrait was more than the story of a pop star. Read more... |
Come Rain Come Shine, ITV1Monday, 20 December 2010
David Jason’s toby jug of a face has been on the television screen over Christmas since the days when you had to get up and switch between three channels by hand. There was nothing ostensibly seasonal in his latest vehicle. A Yuletide entertainment for our times, Come Rain Come Shine had starring roles for three very contemporary ghosts of Christmas Present - belt-tightening, debt and social implosion. But scratch at the surface and what emerged was a neat inversion of the... Read more... |
Strictly Come Dancing: The Final, BBC OneSunday, 19 December 2010
It’s been a journey, an emotional rollercoaster, since 14 soap stars and sports personalities abandoned reality three months ago, donned a series of spandex and chiffon outfits and embarked upon the most important experience of their lives. They all gave it 110 per cent, took disappointment on the chin and came back fighting, and last night the three finalists battled it out for the ultimate prize – the Strictly Come Dancing 2010 glitterball trophy. Read more... |
Festivals Britannia, BBC FourFriday, 17 December 2010
A startling one in 10 British adults apparently went to a music festival this year. Given that I’m a music journalist and I didn’t, maybe I’m some kind of astronomically unlikely anomaly. I’d like to think so. But those familiar aerial shots of Glastonbury – not just a few fields but a sizeable expanse of Britain’s patchwork-quilt landscape, completely overrun by an infestation of teeming humanity - is enough to make me feel smugly sane to have decided, as usual, to just remain cosily at... Read more... |
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