tue 09/09/2025

tv

Who Do You Think You Are? - Naomie Harris, BBC One review - shocks old and new

Veronica Lee

This episode of the celebrity genealogy show began with footage of Naomie Harris at Ian Fleming's former home in Jamaica, where she was helping launch Bond 25 (to be released next year), in which she is playing Moneypenny for the third time.

Read more...

Cindy Sherman: #untitled, BBC Four review - portrait of an enigma

Tom Baily

Cindy Sherman predicted the selfie, so goes the claim. From our current standpoint, it is all too easy to analyse her many hundreds of photographic self-portraits made since the late 1970s as cultural forebears of the digital medium.

Read more...

Keeping Faith, Series 2, BBC One review - family misfortunes

Adam Sweeting

It was a year ago that BBC One scored a smash hit with the first series of Keeping Faith, but as series two opens 18 months have passed since Faith Howells’s husband Evan (Bradley Freegard) disappeared and triggered a traumatic chain reaction of events.

Read more...

I Am Nicola, Channel 4 review - not really love, actually

Adam Sweeting

It’s a bold idea by director Dominic Savage, to create three improvised dramas for Channel 4 depicting women confronting different forms of crisis. To make it work he needed brave and powerful performers, and this first one starred Vicky McClure (the remaining two will feature Samantha Morton and Gemma Chan).

Read more...

The Day We Walked on the Moon, ITV review - it was 50 years ago to the day

Adam Sweeting

It was on 16 July 1969 that Apollo 11 lifted off from Florida en route for the Moon, and exactly 50 years later, as we nervously anticipate the dawn of commercial flights into space, the event resonates louder than ever. Here, Professor Brian Cox called it “the greatest achievement in the history of civilisation.” According to veteran broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald, it was “the most magnificent thing that ever happened.”

Read more...

Inside the Social Network: Facebook's Difficult Year, BBC Two review - how big can it get?

Adam Sweeting

Not everybody is on Facebook, yet. So far, Mark Zuckerberg’s social media monolith has only managed to scrape together about 2.3 billion users, roughly one-third of the planet. But as this fascinating documentary revealed, Facebook’s plans are huge and its ambitions boundless.

Read more...

8 Days: To the Moon and Back, BBC Two review - intimate peek at life in lunar capsule

Tom Baily

The Apollo 11 mission remains the most celebrated journey humanity has ever made. It produced some of our most iconic images, as well as the greatest speech gaffe, and a documentary of epic scale could be made that focused solely on the influence it has had on our popular culture.

Read more...

Charles I: Downfall of a King, BBC Four review - beheaded monarch upstaged by exotic presenter

Adam Sweeting

“I want to discover how our government could fall apart and the country become bitterly divided in just a few weeks,” historian Lisa Hilton announced at the start of her BBC Four account of the traumatic demise of Charles I.

Read more...

Cyclists: Scourge of the Streets?, Channel 5 review - can we make the roads a safer place?

Adam Sweeting

Healthy, efficient and carbon-neutral, cycling ought to be a transport panacea. But in the dash for lycra, perhaps not enough attention has been paid to letting bikes and motor vehicles co-exist peacefully. This deliberately provocative Channel 5 documentary, which has sparked an angry backlash from within the cycling community, found plenty of ammunition from both sides.

Read more...

Dark Money, BBC One review - powerful idea poorly executed

Adam Sweeting

It’s a topical idea, at least. Isaac Mensah, a child actor from a working-class family in London, has been cast in a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, and when he returns home his family and friends are agog to find out what his amazing movie experience was like.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Lammermuir Festival review - music with soul from the heart...

One piece that you’re unlikely to hear at the Lammermuir Festival is Lucia di Lammermoor. As co-director James Waters explained during a...

BBC Proms: Steinbacher, RPO, Petrenko / Sternath, BBCSO, Ora...

My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-...

Honey Don’t! review - film noir in the bright sun

The Coen brothers’ output has been so broad-ranging, and the duo so self-deprecating, that critics have long had difficulty getting their arms...

Blu-ray: The Sweeney - Series One

You’ll have absorbed key strands of The Sweeney‘s DNA even if you’ve never watched an episode, ITV’s groundbreaking police drama having...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern,...

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Black Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)

...

Blondshell, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - woozy roc...

There is such nonchalance with Sabrina Teitelbaum that even her appeals to the crowd appeared laid-back. At points during her set the Los Angeles...

Ganavya, Barbican review - low-key spirituality

At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before...

Music Reissues Weekly: Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Ye...

Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release...

I Fought the Law, ITVX review - how an 800-year-old law was...

ITV continues its passion for docudramas about injustice, which you can’t...