TV
Black Work, ITVMonday, 22 June 2015
Drama is all about secrets revealed, discoveries unfurled. Black Work was straight into that territory from the first scene. A man and a woman sat in a car, taking the solace from each other that they couldn’t find at home. As ever in such a... Read more... |
La Traviata: Love, Death and Divas, BBC TwoSunday, 21 June 2015
Verdi's La Traviata has become one of the best-loved and most-performed works in the operatic repertoire, but this is no thanks to sections of the English press. In this entertaining romp through the opera's history, presenters Tom Service and... Read more... |
Glastonbury Golden Greats, BBC FourSaturday, 20 June 2015
Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury is an odd time. For some it means carrying on carrying on, trying to wring the very last drops out of the weekend and putting off the inevitable, stomach-churning lurch that will signal a nosedive into a colossal... Read more... |
Thomas Chatterton: The Myth of the Doomed Poet, BBC FourTuesday, 16 June 2015
The young casualty of genius fires imaginations and fills coffers. Last year Dylan Thomas’s centenary was vastly celebrated. The Amy Winehouse industry is still shifting units. The spell cast by Sylvia Plath seems not to diminish. A Janis Joplin... Read more... |
Humans, Channel 4Monday, 15 June 2015
New sci-fi series aren't exactly a dime a dozen on British TV, awash as it usually is with serial killers, cops and costume dramas, so the fact that Humans not only exists but is also bold and fresh-looking triggers instant brownie points. It... Read more... |
The Trainer and the Racehorse: The Legend of Frankel, Channel 4Sunday, 14 June 2015
This was the story of a remarkable man, Henry Cecil, a genius with horses and 10 times Champion Trainer. He was felled by tabloid scandal but rose again to train one of the greatest racehorses in history, Frankel. This wholly absorbing programme was... Read more... |
TFI Friday, Channel 4Saturday, 13 June 2015
When TFI Friday first assaulted our screens (nearly) 20 years ago, things were very different. An untucked checked shirt passed for sartorial elegance, magazines sold in big numbers and, within their pages, women were routinely objectified, but... Read more... |
Stonemouth, BBC TwoFriday, 12 June 2015
A young man, in trouble with drunk or drugs, returns to his Scottish family riven by dark secrets? Of course, it’s a new Iain Banks dramatisation, the first since the author’s death two years ago. This version of his 2012 novel Stonemouth attempts... Read more... |
Napoleon, BBC TwoThursday, 11 June 2015
It is irresistible to watch Andrew Roberts, the ambitious historian of one of history's most ambitious figures, narrating a three-part account of his hero’s life and times. He is giving us a superb analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte’s gifts, flaws,... Read more... |
The Interceptor, BBC OneThursday, 11 June 2015
The Interceptor began as it didn’t mean to go on. A young boy of mixed race walked home through an estate and saw two men in a violent altercation. One, who was white, shot the other, who was black, presumably dead. “Dad!” called the boy. The... Read more... |
The Met: Policing London, BBC OneTuesday, 09 June 2015
This is supposed to be a major five-part documentary series probing into the innards of the Metropolitan Police, but it felt suspiciously like W1A in uniform. Was it the muted but insistently ominous background music, always trying to tell us that... Read more... |
The Truth About Your Teeth, BBC OneFriday, 05 June 2015
Teeth. Who’d have them? This documentary about the state of the nation’s gnashers came along at a timely moment for your reviewer. Earlier in the week I suffered my first ever extraction. Didn’t feel a jot of pain, of course, but by Christ you know... Read more... |
