tv
Das Boot, Series 2 Finale, Sky Atlantic review - deeper and darkerWednesday, 01 July 2020
The second series of Das Boot (Sky Atlantic) began strongly, and by the time we reached this last pair of episodes it was almost too agonising to watch. Read more...
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The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway, BBC Four review - mysteries and marvels of the M25Wednesday, 01 July 2020
The nightmarishness of the M25 motorway is well known, especially if you get stuck on the Heathrow section on a wet Sunday night, but as she perambulated around the motorway’s circumference for this idiosyncratic BBC Four documentary, naturalist Helen Macdonald showed us how skilfully nature deals with man-made monstrosities. Read more... |
My Brilliant Friend, Season 2: The Story of a New Name, Sky Atlantic review – a troubling friendship deepensTuesday, 30 June 2020
In her surprisingly self-revealing collection of essays and interviews Frantumaglia (Neapolitan dialect word for a disquieting jumble of ideas), the writer who calls herself Elena Ferrante often ponders the metamorphosis from novel to film. Read more... |
Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, BBC One review - still lives run deepWednesday, 24 June 2020
The eyes have it in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, which is in no way to discount this venerable writer's gift for words. Read more... |
The Choir: Singing for Britain, BBC Two review - the pandemic versus the power of songWednesday, 24 June 2020
Singing in a choir can be terrific therapy for anxiety, depression or loneliness, but one of the cruellest effects of the coronavirus is the way it has restricted normal human interaction. Read more... |
Roswell, New Mexico, ITV2 review - they've landed!Wednesday, 24 June 2020
It fell out of the sky in the summer of 1947, and crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. UFO-logists and conspiracy fanatics insist it was an alien spacecraft, but the US Air Force says it was a meteorological balloon. Read more... |
Perry Mason, Sky Atlantic review - low life and hard times in Depression-era LATuesday, 23 June 2020
Rather like David Suchet’s Poirot, the world will always think of Raymond Burr as the doughty defence lawyer Perry Mason, whom he played in nine TV series and 26 TV movies between 1957 and 1993. But Burr’s Mason existed before the age of the prequel, which now brings us HBO’s impressively-mounted back story of the battling attorney (showing on Sky Atlantic). Read more... |
The Luminaries, BBC One review - one of the most visually arresting dramas of the yearMonday, 22 June 2020
Alarm bells start ringing whenever you discover an author is adapting their own work for a screenplay. In the case of New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton, the alarm proves to be false. Read more... |
Tutankhamun in Colour, BBC Four review - amazing enhanced images bring fabled Pharaoh to lifeFriday, 19 June 2020
Tut in colour, and he is! Read more... |
The Woods, Netflix review - missing-person mystery reveals a heart of darknessThursday, 18 June 2020
After the success of the sci-fi crime drama 1983 (2018), another Polish original series has landed at Netflix. The Woods, directed by Leszek Dawid and Bartosz Konopka, is a six-part mystery thriller adapted from Harlan Coben’s novel, set in two main time spans: 1994 and 2019. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this...
Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not...
Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality...
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The Crucible, Shakespeare's Globe review - stirring acc...
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Album: Sports Team - Boys These Days
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Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall r...
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major...
Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film
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The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hande...
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter....
Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourite...
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two...