TV
Love for Sale - Rupert Everett's guide to the oldest professionFriday, 25 April 2014
Anybody who has read Rupert Everett's book Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins will be well aware of his fascination with sex and prostitution, so it's no surprise to find him very much in his element as writer and presenter of the two-part Channel 4... Read more... |
Jamaica Inn, BBC OneWednesday, 23 April 2014
"Oi felt a darrrkness creepin' overrr me," said Mary Yellan's voice-over as we launched into the second night of the BBC's festival of contraband, squalor and smuggling. Mary, ensconced in the stygian titular dwelling on Bodmin Moor with her... Read more... |
Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This, ITVTuesday, 22 April 2014
Comedians offer rich pickings to dramatists – whether they fall into the crying clown category, or the nice bloke on stage and complete arse off it, or the side-splittingly funny performer who is as boring as watching paint dry in real life. So no... Read more... |
Fargo, Channel 4Monday, 21 April 2014
There's always room on top for another TV anti-hero. After Tony Soprano, Breaking Bad's Walter White and Mad Men's fatally flawed Don Draper, here's Martin Freeman as Fargo's Lester Nygaard, a downtrodden failure of a husband as well as a second-... Read more... |
Messiah at the Foundling Hospital, BBC TwoSunday, 20 April 2014
The last time the BBC dramatised the creation of a great musical work, it didn’t quite hit the spot. Eroica starred Ian Hart as Beethoven glowering at the heart of a drama which had rather less of a narrative through-line than the symphony it... Read more... |
Watermen: A Dirty Business, BBC TwoWednesday, 16 April 2014
It’s a misnomer, of course. Water. It’s not even a prissy misnomer as in “when did you last pass water?” It’s more categorical than that: solids rather than liquids are our subject here. This is essentially a show about shit. Shit and all who sail... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Final Frontier: Trekkie weekend in BlackpoolTuesday, 15 April 2014
“I don’t do the costumes,” says an intense bloke called Adrian. “That’s for people without a life. I’ve no interest in that.” Further down the corridor, or the Upper Deck as they’re calling it for one weekend only, there’s Kevin, who presumably has... Read more... |
Only Connect, BBC FourTuesday, 15 April 2014
EM Forster fans will straight away get the reference in the quiz show's title to Howards End. Those of a less literary bent will make another mental link – Connect Four, a game for six-year-olds and up invented in 1974 and still going strong – which... Read more... |
Ian Hislop's Olden Days: the Power of the Past in Britain, BBC TwoThursday, 10 April 2014
BBC channels One and Two currently present such different sides of Ian Hislop that his appearances should by now be required watching for trainee psychologists. As a founding team captain on Have I Got News For You, his knuckles have left a lasting... Read more... |
Under Offer: Estate Agents on the Job, BBC TwoThursday, 10 April 2014
Hang about with estate agents (for the only reason that anyone would) and you notice the men among them often stand with their hands clasped pliantly in front of them, with their shoulders bent slightly inwards. The pose semaphores trustworthiness,... Read more... |
The Battle for Britain's Breakfast, BBC TwoWednesday, 09 April 2014
As Gyles Brandreth pointed out, before the advent of breakfast television in 1983, Britain was a civilised country in which people ate breakfast while browsing through a newspaper. Then the BBC cheekily nipped in with its new Breakfast Time... Read more... |
Undeniable, ITVMonday, 07 April 2014
Television shorthand for something terrible about to happen includes the car journey where the happy mum is singing at the top of her voice with an even happier kid safely strapped in at the back. No, not that they’re about to do "Wheels on the Bus... Read more... |
