BBC One
Hidden, Series Finale, BBC One/ The Slap, BBC FourThursday, 27 October 2011![]() Many commentators have professed bafflement at the tangled layers of Hidden, as it probed into a sick and murky past while apparently dead characters came back to haunt the present. Right to the end, writer Ronan Bennett kept his cards carefully... Read more... |
Frozen Planet, BBC OneThursday, 27 October 2011![]() It’s been suggested that, come the revolution, the best possible of outcomes to the question of who shall be Head of State is the man off the goggle box who for innumerable aeons has been telling us about the birds and the bees, the silverbacks and... Read more... |
Death in Paradise, BBC OneTuesday, 25 October 2011![]() You'd think a lengthy shoot on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe would be any actor's dream, but apparently Ben Miller found making Death in Paradise too hot and uncomfortable. That means he's perfectly cast as DI Richard Poole, a detective from... Read more... |
Spooks, Series 10 Finale, BBC OneMonday, 24 October 2011![]() And now we faced the final curtain. Spooks responded with an inspired burst of hyperactivity and plots-within-plots, and even a micro-cameo from Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Quinn, the original head of Section D. Up to now this hadn't been the finest of... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - Tracey Emin, BBC OneThursday, 13 October 2011![]() Tracey Emin once made a tent for which she gained some notoriety. On it, she’d appliquéd the names of everyone she had ever slept with – including, as a child, her beloved Granny Hodgkins. Sadly, the tent, called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963... Read more... |
Hidden, BBC OneFriday, 07 October 2011![]() One has learned to approach high-profile BBC dramas with mild apprehension, since apparent promise and oodles of hype frequently turn out to be fig leaves for feeble plotting and a half-baked script (The Hour, this means you. And possibly you too,... Read more... |
Transplant, BBC OneWednesday, 05 October 2011![]() Sixty-five-year-old Penny was exceptional. Unfortunately, just how exceptional was revealed after her death from a brain haemorrhage. In life, she was in the minority of people - 29 per cent - who have placed themselves on the Organ Donor Register.... Read more... |
The Body Farm, BBC OneTuesday, 13 September 2011![]() One didn’t keep a detailed log on the state of decomposition of each and every corpse in all umpteen series of Waking the Dead. Being cold cases, they were none of them too presentable. But did any make quite such a mess as ep one of The Body Farm,... Read more... |
Outnumbered, Series Four, BBC OneFriday, 02 September 2011![]() From the long shot of the suburban London semis onwards, I couldn’t help but think of the 1960s BBC sitcom Not in Front of the Children which similarly focused on a middle-class couple with three children. There’s no laughter track on Outnumbered... Read more... |
Donor Mum: The Children I've Never Met, BBC OneWednesday, 31 August 2011![]() Six months after giving birth to a child conceived through anonymous sperm donation, Sylvia decided to become an egg donor. It was her way, she said, of “giving something back”. It was 1991 and she was to become one of Britain’s first anonymous egg... Read more... |
Harry's Arctic Heroes, BBC OneTuesday, 30 August 2011![]() Does anyone else ever feel a mite sorry for the North Pole? It always takes second billing to its more famous namesake, and you can see why. The South Pole belongs to a continental land mass. Antarctica has penguins, historic huts, and chaps going... Read more... |
The Field of Blood, BBC OneMonday, 29 August 2011![]() The overwhelming impression given in television of urban Scotland in the Eighties is of a land where people had discovered neither vegetables nor lightbulbs. The Field of Blood on BBC One last night went no way towards correcting this: as tenebrous... Read more... |
