tv
Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?Tuesday, 24 December 2019
This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father can quite remember. Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, BBC One review – Dickens classic recast as gruelling horror storyMonday, 23 December 2019
If you came to this expecting to be reminded of such ghosts of Scrooges past as Alastair Sim or Bill Murray, you will have been reaching either for the brandy or the defibrillator. Read more... |
Heston's Marvellous Menu: Back to the Noughties, BBC Two review - ghost of food trends pastFriday, 20 December 2019
Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu. Read more... |
The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, BBC Two review - rehashed political history fails to set pulses racingWednesday, 18 December 2019
All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think? Read more... |
Charles I: Killing a King, BBC Four review - sad stories of the death of kingsWednesday, 18 December 2019
This three-part series by historian Lisa Hilton is a follow-up to her previous effort from last July, Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four). Read more... |
Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar, Channel 5 review - a diverting melding of fact and fictionMonday, 16 December 2019
Christmas and Agatha Christie are a very good fit – how better to spend time with your loved ones than sitting down to watch some murder and intrigue together? Read more... |
Traces, Alibi review - pedigree cast battles implausible plotWednesday, 11 December 2019
Alibi is usually your one-stop shop for re-runs of Father Brown or Death in Paradise, so well done them for commissioning this new murder mystery. Read more... |
How They Built the Titanic, Channel 5 review - the great liner revisited again, but why now?Wednesday, 11 December 2019
The appalling fate of the allegedly unsinkable liner Titanic in 1912 has fuelled endless feature films and documentaries, not to mention a dismal drama series by Julian Fellowes (there was also a proposed Titanic II vessel which would have been built in China, but which remains mysteriously un-launched). Read more... |
Elizabeth Is Missing, BBC One review - a tender but tough-minded drama about ageing and lossMonday, 09 December 2019
In films, as in life, unreliable narrators are not hard to find. But there is something remarkable about the unreliable narrator of Elizabeth is Missing, BBC One’s newest feature-length drama. Its protagonist, Maud (Glenda Jackson), is unreliable in the extreme – confused, forgetful and emotionally wounded. Read more... |
Giri/Haji, Series Finale, BBC Two review - a thriller, but much more besidesFriday, 06 December 2019
Happily, Joe Barton’s tinglingly original thriller (BBC Two) finished as smartly as it began, not by any humdrum tying-up of loose ends but by giving free rein to the story’s ambiguities and impossible choices. If indeed they really were choices. Read more... |
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