documentary
Queen - Days of Our Lives, BBC TwoTuesday, 31 May 2011
Despite selling 300 million albums, being memorialised in stage musicals and computer games and with a feature film about their early career in the works, Queen are still moaning about the press. It's a theme that simmered steadily through this two-... Read more... |
Rio BreaksTuesday, 31 May 2011
There have been stunning films about surfing, like Riding Giants, and also at least one masterpiece about the slums of Rio - City of God. This documentary combines both. It focuses on the lives of two teenage boys, Fabio and Naama, and their dream... Read more... |
The Joy of Easy Listening/ The Prince and the Composer, BBC FourFriday, 27 May 2011
Once upon a time, "easy listening" was a term of abuse and contempt, intended to evoke everything uncool, unhip and musically middle-aged. It meant pipe, cardigan, golf and Bing Crosby, and it was the last thing you'd hear before you were felled... Read more... |
Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood, BBC TwoFriday, 27 May 2011
Paul Merton started his three-part series on the origins of the American film industry with a deliberately clichéd shot, greeting us while standing with the Hollywood sign in view. But he quickly whizzed over to New York City, the true location of... Read more... |
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, BBC TwoMonday, 23 May 2011
As The Observer once put it, an abiding theme of Adam Curtis's documentaries "has been to look at how different elites have tried to impose an ideology on their times, and the tragicomic consequences of those attempts". This neatly sums up the... Read more... |
Le Quattro VolteMonday, 23 May 2011
Last night Robert De Niro’s Cannes jury awarded the Palme d’Or to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, described by one critic there as “a hymn to the glory of creation”. At last year’s festival another film fitted the same description, only it... Read more... |
Sarah Palin's Alaska, Discovery Real Time/ Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail, BBC TwoSunday, 22 May 2011
Someone had moved in next door to the Palins. There was a camera shot of him, his face pixellated out. Apparently he was writing an exposé of the lady of the house. “I think it’s an invasion of our privacy and I don’t like it,” chirrupped Sarah... Read more... |
The Mountain That Had To Be Painted, BBC FourWednesday, 18 May 2011
Half of Wales is visible from the blustery summit. “Of all the hills which I saw in Wales,” recalled George Borrow, author of the prolix Victorian classic Wild Wales, “none made a greater impression upon me.” He was not alone. Arenig Fawr, a... Read more... |
Wonderland: The Hasidic Guide to Love, Marriage and Finding a Bride, BBC TwoWednesday, 18 May 2011
Although in perhaps a less ostentatious manner than is familiar from Louis Theroux's documentaries, BBC Two's Wonderland last night nevertheless took the well-worn path of finding an odd-seeming community and examining its customs, morals and... Read more... |
Fire in BabylonMonday, 16 May 2011
To the relief of many an international batsman, there has never been anything to rival the stupendous West Indies teams which bestrode Planet Cricket with intimidating ferocity from the late Seventies into the Nineties. Fire in Babylon is the story... Read more... |
Perspectives: Hugh Laurie Down by the River, ITV1/ Operation Crossbow, BBC TwoSunday, 15 May 2011
America has been very good to Hugh Laurie. His starring role as Dr Gregory House has shot him to the top of the earnings tree in US television, while comprehensively demolishing existing preconceptions of him as the blissfully idiotic Bertie Wooster... Read more... |
The End of the World? A Horizon Guide to Armageddon, BBC FourThursday, 12 May 2011
“Some say it will end in fire, others say there will be a flood…” So began Horizon’s sobering look at past Armageddon-themed episodes. But why not both? As I was writing this review from a preview DVD, ahead of its original scheduled broadcast on 17... Read more... |
