TV
All Creatures Great and Small: Christmas Special, Channel 5 review - big and little dramas in the DalesWednesday, 23 December 2020
Having launched their new-look All Creatures… back in September to wild acclaim, it was a no-brainer for Channel 5 to commission this Christmas Special. The only mystery is why they didn’t schedule it for Christmas Day, where it would probably have... Read more... |
Upstart Crow: Lockdown Christmas 1603, BBC Two review – plaguey beaks and bubonidiotsTuesday, 22 December 2020
If you’ve loved every episode of Ben Elton’s Shakespeare and Co comedy, you’ll know what to expect – but you’ll have to swallow bittersweet pills from only two of the excellent ensemble who’ve given us such comfort and joyous rapid-fire delivery of... Read more... |
Small Axe: Education, BBC One review - domestic drama concludes groundbreaking film series with quiet powerMonday, 14 December 2020
The fifth and final film in the Small Axe series is titled Education. At first, it appears this refers to the education of the central character, 12-year-old London boy Kingsley Smith, impressively played by Kenyah Sandy, who’s transferred to a... Read more... |
Tin Star: Liverpool, Sky Atlantic review - massed mayhem on MerseysideFriday, 11 December 2020
Breaking away from the outlandish shenanigans in Little Big Bear in the Canadian wilds of its first two series, this third outing for Tin Star brings Jack Worth (Tim Roth), wife Angela (Genevieve O’Reilly) and daughter Anna (Abigail Lawrie) back... Read more... |
Coronation Street: 60 Unforgettable Years, ITV review - inside story of the world's longest-running TV soapTuesday, 08 December 2020
The seductively breathy Joanna Lumley supplied the voice-over for this hugely entertaining romp through the history of Coronation Street, celebrating “the Diamond Jubilee of the world’s longest-running soap.” Yet wasn’t the uber-posh Lumley, scion... Read more... |
Small Axe: Alex Wheatle, BBC One review - elliptical telling of a writer's troubled early lifeMonday, 07 December 2020
Anyone who expects traditional narrative in Steve McQueen’s five Small Axe films about the black experience in the London of the 1970s and 80s will be disappointed. It seems to me that the most experimental of the four so far screened, Lovers Rock,... Read more... |
The Dambusters, Channel 5 review - yet another telling of the Bouncing Bomb storyFriday, 04 December 2020
The story of the raid on dams in Germany's Ruhr Valley by the RAF’s 617 Squadron in May 1943 has become a subject of perennial fascination as well as a potent national myth. The 1955 film The Dam Busters seems to be always showing on a TV channel... Read more... |
The Undoing, Series Finale, Sky Atlantic review - bluff and double-bluff as the truth is revealedTuesday, 01 December 2020
Throughout its preceding five episodes, The Undoing (Sky Atlantic) has skilfully, if a little shamelessly, kept the fickle finger of suspicion in perpetual motion. Though Hugh Grant’s oily, untrustworthy oncologist Jonathan Fraser has been smack in... Read more... |
Small Axe: Red, White and Blue, BBC One review - sobering real-life story of police officer Leroy LoganMonday, 30 November 2020
The third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet (BBC One) took for its subject the real-life story of Leroy Logan, the Islington-born son of Jamaican parents who joined the Metropolitan Police in the early Eighties. Despite encountering racism... Read more... |
What a Carve Up!, Barn Theatre online review – ingenious whodunnitMonday, 30 November 2020
Classical murder mysteries end with a neat solution — and with the arrest of the perpetrator. Postmodern murder mysteries play games with the genre, turning it upside down and inside out. This film adaptation of What a Carve Up!, Jonathan Coe’s 1994... Read more... |
Arena - Fela Kuti: Father of Afrobeat, BBC Two review - the music that never diesSunday, 22 November 2020
There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and... Read more... |
The Good Lord Bird, Sky Atlantic review - picaresque account of the myth of John BrownThursday, 19 November 2020
On the face of it, this new Sky Atlantic series sounded as though it might be a grave and sombre slice of American history, telling the story of the anti-slavery crusader John Brown and how his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia helped push America... Read more... |
