theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Laura De Lisle
Monday, 25 January 2021
Polly Walker's character in Netflix's sumptuous new Regency romance, Bridgerton, could've easily been little more than a villainous Mrs Bennet. We meet Lady Portia Featherington...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 25 January 2021
“Hope”, from the debut album by 20 year old London singer-songwriter Arlo Parks, has a perfect chorus for these times. Blissed piano chords, lazy funk beats, lusciously upbeat...
David Nice
Sunday, 24 January 2021
Finally, it seems, the time is right for a major British TV drama about how the AIDS crisis hit the early 1980s London gay scene. We’ve come a long way even since the audacious...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 24 January 2021
"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying Destiny Street Complete lays it out...
Saskia Baron
Saturday, 23 January 2021
This is an odd film, made even odder by a caption near the beginning, which claims it is "inspired by true events" but doesn’t elaborate. Produced in Belarus, it’s a Holocaust...
Mark Kidel
Saturday, 23 January 2021
Bicep's second album fufills the promise of the first, released in 2017 to wide acclaim. Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, friends since childhood from the city of Belfast,...
Mark Kidel
Friday, 22 January 2021
Jasmila Žbanić’s latest film, once again about the people of her native Bosnia and Herzegovina, is hardly an easy watch....
Veronica Lee
Friday, 22 January 2021
It has taken three years for the second series of Back to reach our screens (a combination of the creator being busy, a star...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 22 January 2021
Sad to report, this fourth series of Call My Agent! (Netflix) will be the final outing for this caustically addictive saga...
Guy Oddy
Friday, 22 January 2021
Norway’s Wardruna have proved to be an unlikely international musical success, both within Scandinavia and further afield,...
Sophia Rahman
Thursday, 21 January 2021
“Fuck business,” Boris Johnson is alleged to have said while Foreign Secretary. (He didn’t deny it). We have seen enough...
Owen Richards
Thursday, 21 January 2021
Romcoms. We all know the tried and tested formula: immature guy, uptight girl, they meet, they like each other, hate each...
Nick Hasted
Thursday, 21 January 2021
Becoming a has-been is Eminem’s main raw material now, the rocket-fuel for his rhetorical flights. He was a folk-devil 20...
Tom Baily
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
It is probable that no other document gets closer to the direct experience of frontline workers and victims of Covid-19 than...
Saskia Baron
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
What a television programme gets called is not always the choice of the people making it, but it certainly is the choice of...
India Lewis
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
In Asylum Road, Olivia Sudjic's third book, everything is purposeful, each loaded gun introduced just waiting to go off...
Katie Colombus
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
In such a somnolent time We Come From The Sun is an awakening – the immediacy and presence of poetry urging you to listen,...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 19 January 2021
The oeuvre of M Night Shyalaman has tended to veer between unsettling creepiness and sometimes hilarious misfires, but,...
Daniel Lewis
Tuesday, 19 January 2021
One of the finer episodes in Raven Leilani’s startling debut (which contains an embarrassment of fine episodes) comes about...
disc of the day
Album: Arlo Parks - Collapsed in Sunbeams
Anticipated debut is a persuasive, sweet-natured, poetic listen
tv
theartsdesk Q&A: actor Polly Walker on 'Bridgerton' and the new breed of period drama
Talking wigs, women, and her (brief) experience of coronavirus
It's a Sin, Channel 4 review - poignant, funny, vibrant masterpiece
Russell T Davies's deep and shapely drama about the impact of AIDS on 1980s London
Call My Agent!, Series 4, Netflix review - the final bow for the Parisian showbiz saga?
It's daggers drawn in the caustic actors-and-agents drama
film
Quo Vadis, Aida review - a Bosnian woman confronts genocide
The 1995 massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica told with chilling intimacy
Baby Done review - romcom done right
Funny, sincere and completely charming Kiwi comedy about unexpected pregnancy
new music
Album: Arlo Parks - Collapsed in Sunbeams
Anticipated debut is a persuasive, sweet-natured, poetic listen
Reissue CDs Weekly: Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Destiny Street Complete
Thought-provoking revisitation of the New York punk pioneer’s second album
classical
'The total confusion about post-Brexit rules adds to the distress': classical musicians speak out
Ten players and administrators on the fallout in government restrictions to EU touring
Apartment House, Wigmore Hall online review - introspective music for isolated times
Serene lockdown listening in three concerts dedicated to Morton Feldman
Classical CDs: Janáček, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, John Wilson
An arboreal opera, two Soviet symphonies and some rarely heard English string music
opera
Best of 2020: Opera
With no touching from mid-March onwards, this art-form was hard hit - but ingenuity ruled
Royal Opera Christmas Concert online review – pajama party around the Nutcracker tree
Vivacious opera and cheesy carols under the lively baton of Mark Wigglesworth
Pagliacci, Opera Ensemble, Longborough review - stripped down but live
Finding the essence of a minor masterpiece
theatre
Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure review - the perfect bedtime story
Sharon D Clarke and Olivia Colman sparkle in delightful radio play in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital
Dick Whittington, National Theatre at Home review - colourful and amiable entertainment
Free stream of the NT's Covid-affected pantomime
Best of 2020: Theatre
Out of pandemic-driven chaos and confusion came moments of clarity - and "Blindness"
dance
The Nutcracker: an end-of-year obituary
It's been a rough ride for the seasonal cash cow. Here's how ballet companies coped
The Seven Deadly Sins, Opera North online review - viscerally thrilling
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's indictment of capitalism in a vibrant new production
comedy
Back, Channel 4 review - return of sibling-rivalry comedy with Mitchell and Webb
Simon Blackwell delves into fraternal mind games
Comedy podcasts round-up 2: from home and abroad
Lively chat, masterful spoofing and behind-the-scenes fun
Books
Olivia Sudjic: Asylum Road review - trauma, barely suppressed
A timely and absorbing reminder of the proximity of violence
Raven Leilani: Luster - portrait of the artist as a black millennial woman
Diamond-cut debut catches every glint of our modern malaise
Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire - The Final Lectures review - imagining the alternative
An eye-opening exploration of the relationship between capitalism and desire
visual arts
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tate Britain review - enigmatic figures full of life
When is a painting not a portrait?
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, Royal Academy review - juxtapositions that confuse rather than clarify
Similar themes, different sensibilities
latest comments
Thanks very much for your comment Elizabeth - and...
Thanks Craig. When I said "Hills Phil and Graham...
Nice write up, but it’s Phil Hill, not Hills Phil.
I agree - great to see some of these key figures...
The EU probably hasn't even been approached by...
I’m not trying to play Debbie Downer here but it...
The Jenkin move, reported on the BBC's news...
The original EU offer MUST be reinstated, and...