BBC One
The Apprentice Series 7: The Final, BBC OneSunday, 17 July 2011
Just as we thought we were getting tired of the format, the BBC rang in the changes. It was no longer an apprentice Lord Sugar was after, but a partner in a business that he would invest a quarter of a million in. The candidates – 16 freshly... Read more... |
Torchwood, BBC OneThursday, 14 July 2011
The return of Russell T Davies’s second most famous creation arrives coated with a transatlantic sheen, courtesy of an injection of co-production money from the USA’s Starz cable network (home of Spartacus and Camelot). Happily, this has not... Read more... |
British Masters, BBC Four/ The World's Most Expensive Paintings, BBC OneTuesday, 12 July 2011
Does James Fox fancy himself as the Niall Ferguson of art history? I ask because clearly this latest addition to the growing pantheon of television art historians wants to do for British art what Ferguson sought to do for the British Empire. He... Read more... |
Luther, Series Finale, BBC OneWednesday, 06 July 2011
What a strange, shape-shifting thing Luther is. Storylines ebb and flow around Idris Elba's dauntingly huge central character like flotsam and debris borne along on a heaving swell, but the man himself wades imperiously through it all like the... Read more... |
Stolen, BBC OneSunday, 03 July 2011
Mainstream television drama has always shone a searching beam into the Stygian murk of society’s ills. But however laudable its campaigning credentials, a drama’s first duty to its audience is to work as drama. Cathy Come Home changed the public... Read more... |
Fake or Fortune?, Episodes 1 & 2, BBC OneTuesday, 28 June 2011
Fake or Fortune? on BBC One, with Fiona Bruce and art dealer and sleuth Philip Mould, ought to have been called CSI: Cork Street for its blend of fine art and forensic science. They were trying to resolve whether a Monet was in fact a Monet, using a... Read more... |
Luther, Series 2, BBC OneWednesday, 15 June 2011
A year ago when Luther battered down the door like a wailing banshee in bovver boots on day release, it was all a bit underwhelming. People shrugged and wondered whether Idris Elba was condemned to roam in eternal script limbo. They weren’t at all... Read more... |
Case Histories, BBC OneSunday, 05 June 2011
Thanks to her evergreen bestseller Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson can call on an army of fans to buy her work whenever it appears in print. Its debut on screen is, perhaps, another matter. Will they buy the BBC’s rendition of Case... Read more... |
Bafta TV Awards 2011Sunday, 22 May 2011
Crikey, no gongs whatsoever for ITV1's Downton Abbey, but you can't grumble about Sherlock lifting the Best Drama Series award at last night's Baftas. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's ingenious update of Conan Doyle for BBC One was one of 2010's... Read more... |
The Street That Cut Everything, BBC OneTuesday, 17 May 2011
There’s nothing like a reality TV programme to bring a community together. Or maybe not. The Street That Cut Everything took one suburban cul-de-sac in Preston and shook up its residents thus: if they wanted their bins emptied, their street cleaned... Read more... |
The Apprentice Series 7, BBC One/ You're Fired, BBC TwoTuesday, 10 May 2011
Oh joy upon joys, as The Apprentice returns. Those of you who watch while playing a drinking game in which you imbibe every time a cliché or preposterous, bombastic or ridiculously inflated statement is uttered will have to check in your livers... Read more... |
Inside the Human Body, BBC OneFriday, 06 May 2011
Dr Michael Mosley has been involved in some pretty hair-raising stunts in the course of filming various biology strands for the BBC. So, I imagine he might have felt something like relief filming his new series Inside the Human Body. With neither... Read more... |
