ITV
Television: 10 Top Performances from 2013Friday, 27 December 2013![]() No definitive answers to what was "the best" of 2013 of course, and I daresay opinions will differ wildly. For instance, despite the plaudits showered on it elsewhere, I felt that Broadchurch stretched itself too thin after showing initial promise.... Read more... |
Boyzone at 20: No Matter What, ITV1Friday, 13 December 2013In her role as host of this 20th-anniversary celebration, Dannii Minogue was not afraid to ask the tough questions that fans of Ireland’s greatest - or possibly other greatest - boy band wanted to know. “It’s the elephant in the room,” admitted... Read more... |
Being Paul Gascoigne, ITVWednesday, 25 September 2013![]() There was a time when England’s greatest and most charismatic footballer of the last 40 years would inspire fine writers to flights of poetry. Karl Miller in the London Review of Books compared him to “a priapic monolith in the Mediterranean sun”.... Read more... |
The Guilty, ITVFriday, 06 September 2013![]() Scientists may have found a cure for insomnia. It’s thinking up names for television detectives. Have you noticed how elephant-tranquilisingly dull they are? Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller. Len Harper. Denise Woods. Tony Gates, Steve Arnott and Kate... Read more... |
Whitechapel, Series Four, ITV1Thursday, 05 September 2013I can’t have been alone in my struggle to keep the two of them straight in my head: there’s the one set in the east end of London, in which a former BBC Spook tries to track down Jack the Ripper; and then there’s the one set in the east end of... Read more... |
Love and Marriage, ITVThursday, 06 June 2013![]() They say that you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I began to grow bored with Love and Marriage about halfway through the opening credits. What seemed like endless pairs of smiling, photogenic couples swung onto the screen against a... Read more... |
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: The Murder in Angel Lane, ITVMonday, 13 May 2013The disgraced ex-cop turned private investigator has become such a trope of contemporary noir that the fate of the first great modern detective, following the events of his first televised outing, is not particularly surprising. The Murder in Angel... Read more... |
The Big Reunion, Metro Radio Arena, NewcastleTuesday, 07 May 2013![]() With a full-on commercial break in the middle of the programme and teary clips from the television show interspersed throughout, The Big Reunion live show really does play out like an extended episode of ITV2’s unlikely reality hit. Thankfully this... Read more... |
Broadchurch, Series Finale, ITVTuesday, 23 April 2013![]() And the killer is... No, that would be telling, and you might not have watched it on catch-up yet. But was the revelation worth the wait?We often complain about the way British TV dramas are often squeezed into three or four (or two) parts, when an... Read more... |
The Ice Cream Girls, ITVSaturday, 20 April 2013![]() A new drama series at 9pm on a Friday? How often does that happen, eh? Friday is supposed to be reserved for quiz shows, comedies and BBC Four documentaries about disco music.Whether it should have happened is, for the time being, a moot point.... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 1, ITVMonday, 15 April 2013![]() Where will it end? Inspector Morse keeled over all the way back in the year 2000. Then the faintly unimaginable happened. Morse’s plodding sidekick Lewis got a promotion and started solving Oxford’s apparently inexhaustible supply of murders himself... Read more... |
Inspector Morse's Last RoundSunday, 14 April 2013![]() Oxford. A glum afternoon in early spring, 2000. Tourists clogging the city’s arteries. On a terrace overlooking the river Cherwell, a tour guide finishes her spiel and shepherds a flock of pensioners on to the next destination. A lone squat figure... Read more... |
