BBC One
Walliams & Friend, BBC OneSaturday, 26 November 2016
The sketch format goes in and out of favour. It was huge in the 1970s, crawled under a rock when alternative comedians found other means of expression, and was reinvigorated 20 years ago by genuinely inventive shows like Big Train and The Fast Show... Read more... |
My Mother and Other Strangers, BBC OneMonday, 14 November 2016
This new wartime drama launched on Remembrance Sunday is a curio. The setting of My Mother and Other Strangers is rural Northern Ireland in 1943, where it’s green and wet and a long way from the conflict. Into the midst of the fictional Moybeg on... Read more... |
Poldark, Series 2 Finale / Planet Earth II, BBC OneMonday, 07 November 2016
So, a rough tally. We’ve had a trial, a near suicide, a punch-up, death by drowning, a near bankruptcy, a tin rush, another punch-up, a baby, a probable rape, a riot, another baby, and another one on the way, possibly a product of that probable rape... Read more... |
Ordinary Lies, Series 2, BBC OneWednesday, 19 October 2016
The concept is somewhere between single drama and series: to stay in one place while shifting focus from one character to another. Paul Abbott did it in Clocking Off, telling a different story each week about a group of workers in a Manchester... Read more... |
The Missing, Series 2, BBC OneThursday, 13 October 2016
It seems morbid, and perhaps even in dubious taste, to create a TV drama franchise focusing on the hideous fate of abducted children and the repercussions this has on their family and friends. Still, ratings are their own reward, and the first... Read more... |
One of Us, BBC OneWednesday, 31 August 2016
“One of us is crying/ One of us is lying/ In her lonely bed/ Staring at the ceiling/ Wishing she was somewhere else instead…” Poor Juliet Stevenson must have wondered how she’d ended up like the girl in the Abba song – waiting for a call from her... Read more... |
The Living and the Dead, Series Finale, BBC OneWednesday, 03 August 2016
If Ashley Pharoah's superior chiller began with its 19th century protagonist, Nathan Appleby, trying to apply science and reason to seemingly irrational events, by the end of this sixth and final episode he had strayed way beyond the outer limits.... Read more... |
The Secret Agent, BBC OneMonday, 18 July 2016
Based on an abortive real-life attempt to blow up the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1894, Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent has sometimes been held up as a harbinger of the kind of terrorist attacks the world has been subjected to by the... Read more... |
The Living and the Dead, BBC OneWednesday, 29 June 2016
This new series by Ashley Pharoah is dramatically different from his previous efforts in Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars, though he still likes travelling though time. His method here was to saw off chunks of Far From the Madding Crowd, stir in some... Read more... |
EU Referendum Results – BBC, ITV, Sky NewsFriday, 24 June 2016
And so we come to the end of the most spiteful, divisive and downright deceitful political campaign in living memory. And while we’re on the Ds, I’ll have disingenuous too, thanks. The remain camp was captained by a mildly Eurosceptic prime minister... Read more... |
New Blood, BBC OneFriday, 10 June 2016
New Blood began as it didn’t quite mean to go on. Somewhere in India five Brits on their travels mustered in a medical laboratory as volunteers to test-run a new drug. The tone was pregnant with portent, so it was no surprise when a knife was... Read more... |
Wallander, Series 4 Finale, BBC One / Dicte: Crime Reporter, More4Monday, 06 June 2016
This concluding mini-series starring the sorrowful Swede began with a bizarre misfire set in South Africa, but redeemed itself with a finale imbued with persuasively Wallander-ish characteristics. The light was grey, flat and menacing. Landscape... Read more... |
