Reviews
Matthew Wright
BBC channels One and Two currently present such different sides of Ian Hislop that his appearances should by now be required watching for trainee psychologists. As a founding team captain on Have I Got News For You, his knuckles have left a lasting impression on panellists including Jimmy Savile, Piers Morgan and Neil Hamilton; but switch over to one of his documentaries, which have graced all of the more thoughtful channels, and we find a wryly avuncular character. Sometimes he’s even cosy, and that’s something a satirist never should.During two and a half decades ensuring HIGNFY remains Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
A mouth-watering mixture of romance, drama and comedy is delivered in this fresh and impressive debut from Indian writer-director Ritesh Batra. A poignant and bittersweet relationship between a lonely housewife and a man on the brink of retirement is set in motion via a mistake by the legendary dabbawalla lunchbox delivery service of Mumbai who mix up an order.Housewife Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is stuck in a desperately unhappy marriage and as a final attempt to make things better she prepares a delicious surprise meal for her husband to grab his attention. Unfortunately it's mistakenly delivered to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Hang about with estate agents (for the only reason that anyone would) and you notice the men among them often stand with their hands clasped pliantly in front of them, with their shoulders bent slightly inwards. The pose semaphores trustworthiness, humility and the morals of a choirboy. Uriah Heep, ever so ‘umble, would have made a fine addition to the trade.Under Offer: Estate Agents on the Job is a docusoap about a profession that gets an even worse press than the press. The idea is to show its human face. So meet Lewis, who’s a big cheese in Exeter. “I’m the guy that’s sick in the urinal Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Flying masonry put the Apollo in the headlines late last year when part of the theatre’s ceiling collapsed; now an airborne vampire and an impressive refurbishment give it new life. A cyclorama of dark tree branches and cloud-scudded skies covers the ongoing repair work overhead. And onstage, amid Christine Jones’s eerily gorgeous design of woodland shrouded in glittering, feathery, blue-white snow, the company of John Tiffany’s stunning production cast their heartbreaking spell.The first West End transfer for the National Theatre of Scotland, and for the Royal Court under the artistic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The on-stage collaboration between north-Norwegian ambient maestro Biosphere and his similarly inclined but sonically darker countryman Deathprod was a one off. At Oslo’s Tape to Zero festival, Biosphere and Deathprod bought the you-had-to-be-there moment. The pair had collaborated for a remix project of composer Arne Nordheim in 1998, but this was about new music.The two days weren’t just about this unique partnership. Tape to Zero united Susanna Wallumrød (who performs as Susanna and was formerly half of Susanna & the Magical Orchestra) and off-kilter Dutch singer-songwriter Jessica Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Are the 2010s a rerun of the 1980s? You know that familiar feeling of déjà vu: economic collapse, royal wedding and Tories in power. Not to mention privatization and the spirit of rampant capitalism abroad in the land. Surely, these are the ideal conditions for a revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s exposé of entrepreneurial greed, A Small Family Business, at the National, where it premiered in 1987. But does the play’s criticism of dishonesty remain resonant today?Unsurprisingly, this is a family story. It starts with Jack McCracken taking over the family furniture business, which was founded by his Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Gyles Brandreth pointed out, before the advent of breakfast television in 1983, Britain was a civilised country in which people ate breakfast while browsing through a newspaper. Then the BBC cheekily nipped in with its new Breakfast Time programme, a fortnight ahead of the much-hyped all-star TV-am project, and the nation has been going to hell in a handbasket ever since.This often hilarious account of the breakfast TV wars of the 1980s ladled on the military metaphors a little too eagerly, but it was propelled swiftly forwards by a droll voice-over from Peter Snow as it unravelled a lurid Read more ...
emma.simmonds
After reinvigorating the actioner in 2011 with The Raid and its furious flurry of feet and fists, what next for the obscenely talented Welsh writer-director Gareth Evans? More of the same? Well, not quite. The sequel widens its net and extends its running-time, taking the action from a Jakarta tower block to the city's streets and dividing its time between the gangs competing for control of the city. Returning are Evans' martial arts muse Iko Uwais (with whom this marks his third collaboration) and the almost embarrassingly exciting ultra-violence.Just as computer games have evolved their Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In the 1960s and early 70s drummer Jack DeJohnette, now 71, was learning his craft with nearly everyone who was anyone, including Coltrane, Monk, Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. Last night at the Barbican, he was the presiding spirit (if not, technically, leader) in a new multi-generational “supergroup”, the Spring Quartet, alongside Blue Note’s star saxophonist Joe Lovano (61), and two thirtysomethings, pianist Leo Genovese, and the winner of the 2011 best new artist Grammy Esperanza Spalding. It was like watching spring in slow motion: the new shoots are vigorous, but there’s still plenty of Read more ...
emma.simmonds
"I first tasted semen when I was seven-years-old." Those are the first words spoken in Calvary, the superb second film from writer-director John Michael McDonagh. They're delivered by an unseen confessor addressing Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson). The priest's response: "It's certainly a startling opening line." Well, quite. Evidently fucking with us from the off, Calvary wants to shock and is inclined to nod and wink at its own machinations. However, what might at first seem like a movie that's merely incendiary and irreverent in nature gradually reveals itself capable of considerably Read more ...
Andy Plaice
Television shorthand for something terrible about to happen includes the car journey where the happy mum is singing at the top of her voice with an even happier kid safely strapped in at the back. No, not that they’re about to do "Wheels on the Bus", I mean something even worse, like mummy getting her head caved in with a rock while daughter plays yards away by the water’s edge.In fact episode one of Undeniable, ITV’s two-part psychological thriller from screenwriter Chris Lang, felt strangely familiar from the start but maybe that was the point. Twenty-three years ago Jane was a girl who Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The BBC is going to reap a rich harvest from The Crimson Field. Sarah Phelps’s drama impresses for a whole number of reasons that will score with viewers: there's the closed community and class elements we know so well from the likes of Downton, as well as rather more room for fermentation of youthful hormones, male and female alike, among a shapely cast.Most of all though it has the sheer emotionally powerful drama of war, with its stories of life and death that will be resounding throughout this “commemorative” year. The timeline of this opening episode was June 1915, the casualties of Read more ...