tv
Michael Grade's History of the Pantomime Dame, BBC FourFriday, 21 December 2012
There's nothing like a dame, as any panto fan knows. Read more... |
The Town, ITV1Thursday, 20 December 2012
Plaudits to ITV for their recent campaign of new drama, even if the results have been patchy. The best ones have been well worth persevering with, and The Bletchley Circle and Tony Marchant's Leaving have wedged themselves most firmly in the mind. Read more... |
The Christmas No 1 Story, BBC TwoThursday, 20 December 2012
Of all the festive institutions, the Christmas No 1 holds a special place in my heart. I was one of those kids who, over the month of December, would carefully plot which CD single I’d be pledging my allegiance to (usually not the ultimate winner, apart from that one year Gary Jules’s cover of “Mad World”, from the Donnie Darko soundtrack, fluked it). Read more... |
Imagine: A Beauty is Born, BBC OneWednesday, 19 December 2012
They should use the whole Yeats line: "A terrible beauty is born". The programme, A Beauty is Born, being terrible, I mean, rather than the Beauty, which is Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, his latest dance work, which isn't terrible at all, just a mite disappointing. And it strives a great deal higher and with more aim to stimulate than Alan Yentob did in this stock documentary from the BBC's flagship arts strand. Read more... |
BBC Sports Personality of the Year, BBC OneMonday, 17 December 2012
Splendid summer, cataclysmic autumn. In the last six months, the BBC has tested to the limits the meaning of the phrase “good in parts”. The people at the top of the Corporation – and by March there’ll be a fourth rump in the DG’s hot seat within seven months – will have been looking forward to this seasonal beanfeast with more than usual avidity. Read more... |
The Killing III, Series Finale, BBC FourSunday, 16 December 2012
I hope it isn't giving too much away for iPlayer catcher-uppers to say that in the end Sarah Lund never did get that undemanding desk job. Instead, the third outing for this ferociously gripping Danish series dragged us screaming and biting our nails right down to the wire, and managed to reach a conclusion simultaneously shocking and saddening yet, in a way, satisfying too. Read more... |
The Hour, Series 2 Finale, BBC TwoFriday, 14 December 2012
When the first series of The Hour aired last year, there was a lot of excitable talk about how it was the "British Mad Men". Having sat through series two, I've concluded that in fact it's the British version of Pan Am, that bizarrely idiotic airline series where all the air hostesses were covert operatives for the CIA, and visits to exotic international locations were achieved using plywood props and big photographs of famous landmarks. Read more... |
Rome - A History of The Eternal City, BBC FourThursday, 13 December 2012
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian in a hurry - as well he might be when there’s a whole millennium to fit into an hour. A year ago we had his three-parter Jerusalem - The Making of a Holy City, now we’re well into Rome - A History of The Eternal City: no mean feat, given that these are major, impeccably researched and made projects. Read more... |
This World: Cuba With Simon Reeve, BBC TwoWednesday, 12 December 2012
The singer-songwriter Jesse Malin opens one of his songs with a monologue about a trip to Russia. Fresh out of a relationship, and invited by the gypsy punk troupe Gogol Bordello to open their tour of the country, he looked forward to seeing Red Square and spending time in a different world. He was disappointed, however, when the first things he saw there were a McDonald’s, a Starbucks and a Subway. Read more... |
The Poison Tree, ITV1Tuesday, 11 December 2012
When watching an adaptation there are times when it's better to have no acquaintance with the original. That certainly goes for thrillers, in which the reveal is all, so it is with considerable smugness that one brandishes one’s ignorance of The Poison Tree. Wiki advises that it is a bestselling psychological thriller which has floated the boat of the likes of Richard and Judy and their estimable book club. Read more... |
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