tv
My Brilliant Friend, Sky Atlantic review - rich revelations of childhoodTuesday, 20 November 2018![]()
This opening episode of My Brilliant Friend was a stunning symphony in grey. Read more... |
Louis Theroux's Altered States: Choosing Death, BBC Two review - profound and movingMonday, 19 November 2018![]()
The toughest subject you can imagine: when, and how, would you choose death over life? This riveting film examined that excruciating dilemma within the legal frameworks on offer to some of the terminally ill in the United States. Read more... |
Our Classical Century, BBC Four review - enthusiasm and delightFriday, 16 November 2018![]()
Jerusalem! Read more... |
They Shall Not Grow Old, BBC Two review - Peter Jackson's Great War finaleMonday, 12 November 2018![]()
Peter Jackson has form when it comes to re-examining cinema history. In 1995 he made Forgotten Silver, a documentary about Colin McKenzie, a New Zealand filmmaker who not only made the first sound recordings but also invented the tracking shot and the close-up, and pioneered colour film, back in the 1910s long before his counterparts in America and France. Read more... |
WW1: The Last Tommies, BBC Four review - Great War storiesThursday, 08 November 2018![]()
“Why should I go out and kill somebody I never knew? There was no reason at all in it in my way of thinking.” Britain’s very last Tommy was Harry Patch, born in 1898, conscripted in 1916 and still alive on his 111th birthday in 2009. Read more... |
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix review - girl power goes supernaturalSaturday, 03 November 2018![]()
Not to be confused with Nineties supernatural sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Netflix’s new incarnation of the high-schooler with infernal powers is a ghoulish thrill-ride which boldly surfs the dark side, with a pronounced feminist and... Read more... |
Imagine... Becoming Cary Grant, BBC One review - contemplative portrait of a starWednesday, 31 October 2018![]()
Mark Kidel has made a beautiful, ethereal film projecting his version of Cary Grant and as such it’s destined to be picked over by the actor’s legions of fans, each of whom will have a different version. But what would the man himself have thought if he’d lived to see Becoming Cary Grant? Read more... |
Strangers, Series Finale, ITV review - Eastern promise goes unfulfilledTuesday, 30 October 2018![]()
After seeming to spend an interminable amount of time wandering around in a daze and blundering up blind alleys, Strangers finally gathered its wits and cantered towards the finishing tape with a renewed sense of purpose in the final two episodes. Read more... |
The Little Drummer Girl, BBC One, review - latest Le Carré just passes auditionMonday, 29 October 2018![]()
When after six novels John Le Carré turned away from the Cold War, he turned towards another simmering post-war conflict, between Israel and Islam. The Little Drummer Girl was published in 1983, and filmed a year later with Diane Keaton and Klaus Kinski. Read more... |
Berlin Station, More 4 review - spooks in EurolandFriday, 26 October 2018![]()
It’s eight years since Richard Armitage’s character Lucas North died in Spooks, but now Armitage is back undercover as CIA agent Daniel Miller in Berlin Station. Mind you, it’s already been touch and go – Miller was shot in in Berlin’s Potzdamer Platz in a flash-forward opening sequence, but apparently not fatally. 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.
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Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist...

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