TV
Trauma, ITV, review - surgically imprecise revenge dramaThursday, 15 February 2018
When you’re hot, you’re hot. In the past two years Mike Bartlett has had the following works staged or broadcast: Wild, a play about Edward Snowden at Hampstead Theatre; Albion, a three-hour neo-Chekhovian state-of-the-nation play at the Almeida; an... Read more... |
Collateral, BBC Two review - a lecture or a drama?Thursday, 15 February 2018
It says something about the state of television that sooner or later every actor has to play a cop or a spy. Latest in line is Carey Mulligan, starring as DI Kip Glaspie in David Hare’s new four-parter Collateral.This is, on the face of it, a... Read more... |
McMafia, Series finale, BBC One review - the last bite is the cruellestMonday, 12 February 2018
McMafia has taught us to recognise one thing – you might call it the “Norton stride”. As the charismatic Alex Godman, James Norton has been advancing, confidently at screen centre, towards one challenge after another, and they have been coming (... Read more... |
Derry Girls, Channel 4 review – bring on series two!Friday, 09 February 2018
When first announced, Derry Girls seemed a strange prospect. Derry during The Troubles wasn’t an obvious choice for a sitcom; neither was writer Lisa McGee, whose only previous comedy outing London Irish was slammed for negative... Read more... |
Listed: Suffragettes portrayedTuesday, 06 February 2018
It was both astonishing and depressingly unsurprising that Suffragette, Sarah Gavron’s feature about the insurgent foot soldiers of the campaign for women’s suffrage, was the first fictionalised film specifically about the movement. There are more... Read more... |
John Mahoney: 'I wanted to be like everybody else'Tuesday, 06 February 2018
In 11 seasons of Frasier, John Mahoney played Marty Crane, a cussed blue-collar ex-cop who couldn’t quite understand how his loins came to produce two prissily cultured psychiatrists. His ally in straight-talking was his physiotherapist Daphne,... Read more... |
Spiral, Series 6 Finale, BBC Four review - hot fuzz hit new heightsSunday, 04 February 2018
Happily, there’s hope for Spiral junkies – as series six ends, we bring you news that series seven has just gone into production. This is just as well, because these last dozen episodes have been an object lesson in how to make TV drama for the mind... Read more... |
Requiem, BBC One review – everything but the scaresSaturday, 03 February 2018
Despite horror’s omnipresence in cinema, British television has been somewhat deprived of jump scares. Every couple of years there’s an anomaly, such as Sky’s The Enfield Haunting or ITV’s Marchlands, but nothing has caught the public’s imagination... Read more... |
Gomorrah, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - there will be bloodFriday, 02 February 2018
No doubt McMafia has its strengths, but it’s like a mug of Horlicks compared to the grappa-with-aviation-fuel blast of Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic). The Naples-set organised crime drama takes no prisoners. It gives no quarter, and expects none.As a... Read more... |
Strike Back, Series 6 part 2, Sky 1 review - shoot first, talk laterThursday, 01 February 2018
After a mysterious mid-season break which seemed to catch everyone by surprise, Strike Back’s sixth season belatedly bounces noisily back. So far the story has ricocheted around the Middle East before detouring to Hungary, where our indestructible... Read more... |
Hits, Hype and Hustle: An Insider's Guide to the Music Business, BBC Four review - how gigs got bigSaturday, 27 January 2018
The “insider’s guide to the music business” tag attached to Hits, Hype and Hustle: An Insider's Guide to the Music Business (BBC Four) dangles the carrot of all kinds of clandestine scams being exposed, such as extortionate recording contracts,... Read more... |
Inside No 9, series 4, BBC Two review - laughter in the darkWednesday, 24 January 2018
Talk about laughter in the dark. With every successive episode, the fourth series of Inside No 9 (BBC Two) has perceptibly turned a shade blacker. "Zanzibar" was a festive farce mashing up half the plots of Shakespeare from Macbeth to A Comedy of... Read more... |
