TV
The Good Wife, Series 7, More4 / The Nightmare Worlds of HG Wells, Sky ArtsFriday, 29 January 2016
Seventh series (★★★★) of the superior legal drama (still perversely tucked away on the obscurantist More4), and Alicia Florrick is having to get back to legal basics. Having been blown up by a political landmine in series six, as she made an ill-... Read more... |
The Real Marigold Hotel, BBC TwoWednesday, 27 January 2016
One novel and two movies, but the BBC cheekily claims that this three-part series was inspired by Deborah Moggach’s 2004 novel These Foolish Things, and the pair of films The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – but not related. How did the programme-makers... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 3 FinaleMonday, 25 January 2016
We have been here before – literally. Morse and his colleagues discreetly observe a gangster’s funeral in Kensal Green cemetery – just as they did in Promised Land, one of the best episodes of Inspector Morse, first broadcast in March 1991. A... Read more... |
Stan Lee's Lucky Man, Sky1Saturday, 23 January 2016
Sky are making a big deal about the fact that this new fantasy-drama is based on an idea by Marvel Comics superhero Stan Lee, but the "lucky man" is surely the 93-year-old Lee himself. "They [Sky's production team] went back to England to do the... Read more... |
The Story of China, BBC TwoFriday, 22 January 2016
China’s tumultuous recent past attempted to selectively obliterate the history of one of the world’s great and ancient civilisations, with the neatly complementary result in the past several decades of a huge upsurge in Chinese studies, East and... Read more... |
The Jihadis Next Door, Channel 4Wednesday, 20 January 2016
A year ago, Channel 4 aired Jamie Roberts's documentary Angry, White and Proud, the result of a year Roberts spent getting to know members of far-right splinter groups. Now here's the follow-up, this time the result of two years' research into... Read more... |
Crashing, Channel 4Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Created and written by the abundantly talented Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also stars, Crashing is set among a group of twenty- and thirtysomethings living in a disused hospital in London, which the characters are “protecting” – sort of legalised... Read more... |
Occupied, Sky ArtsThursday, 14 January 2016
Even the most glazed-eyed Europhile must have begun to notice that the EU's righteous halo is dimming a tiny bit. Against a backdrop of currency chaos and uncontrolled immigration, issues of sovereignty and national self-determination are... Read more... |
The Story of Scottish Art, BBC FourThursday, 14 January 2016
“Finding the Light”, the second episode of this four-part series, took us to the period when Scottish intellectuals led the world in innovative and revolutionary thinking, Edinburgh’s neo-classical architecture in the leafy streets of the New Town... Read more... |
Tracey Ullman's Show, BBC OneTuesday, 12 January 2016
Tracey Ullman is, I suspect, virtually unknown to anybody who either wasn’t around in the 1980s or isn’t a student of that decade’s comedy. For those in either camp, she was a very big name in British television before she left the UK to live and... Read more... |
Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands / Mr Selfridge, Series 4, ITVMonday, 11 January 2016
The miracle of galloping digital technology has become a mixed blessing. We have iPads, space stations and self-parking cars. On the other hand, we also have what might be perfectly good TV programmes made ludicrous by absurd CGI monsters.ITV's new-... Read more... |
Spin, More 4Saturday, 09 January 2016
Walter Presents, Channel 4's clever and welcome strand of foreign, subtitled drama for broadcast both on television and online, is already throwing up some interesting titles. It launched with the Cold War-set Deutschland 83, and now second in the... Read more... |
