Reviews
Adam Sweeting
In 10 series stretching over the last 18 years, ITV's Doc Martin unobtrusively became an enduringly popular household name, but it finally reached the end of the road with this Christmas one-off. Unless, of course, there’s a prequel, a sequel, an origin story or a transformed internationalised version from Netflix.But barring all that, this was the last we’ll see of Martin Clunes’s doggedly grumpy and stone-faced Doctor Martin Ellingham. He’s a bit like a medical Blackadder. Series creator Dominic Minghella based Ellingham on Dr Martin Bamford from the 2000 movie Saving Grace, also played by Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Edgar Allan Poe fathered the detective genre as well as a school of Gothic horror, and Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s 1830-set novel acts as an origin story for the author and the whodunnit.Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is the prototype for the Rue Morgue murders’ deducer, Auguste Dupin. He’s a legendary, retired police detective, asked to solve a death at the West Point military academy in wintry upstate New York. The suicide verdict of Dr Marquis (Toby Jones) is swiftly altered to ritual murder then followed by a second, with hearts carved out of hanged bodies. Landor Read more ...
David Nice
Looking through everything we’ve covered this year – and some of our reviewers have made their choices from an even wider sphere – I find, as in 2021, that the abundance of classical-concert top choices is richer than the number of truly outstanding opera productions. Personally, I’ve seen only three performances in the UK that ticked all boxes (production, singing, conducting, top quality work) and three abroad, despite limited travel.Curiously, the one that brought me most joy was Charles Court Opera's pocket Patience at Wilton’s Music Hall, turning exigence to creative advantage in having Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.Just as it was when The Beatles were operational, the Revolver box and Get Back gave other things out there standards to aspire to. This pair of archive releases became a wholly unexpected yardstick for 2022. Obviously though, brows at labels aren’t furrowing about Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As the third series of All Creatures… ended a couple of months ago, Britain had just declared itself at war with Germany and the men of Darrowby were queuing resolutely in the town square to join the armed forces. Intriguingly, as the credits rolled, it seemed that among them was one of our headlining vets, Tristan Farnon (Callum Woodhouse).So it proved, and Tristan’s determination to join the war effort, and the despairing efforts to stop him by his older brother Siegfried (Samuel West), provided the running theme of this Yuletide one-off. Screenwriter Ben Vanstone, who must still be Read more ...
David Nice
Quite apart from the stunning range of colours and phrasing, Pavel Kolesnikov’s recitals always give you much more than the programme promises. A golden thread through shorter pieces has been one approach, but here he did something different – sailed for the deep waters only in three chameleonic masterpieces, but suggested the connections by unveiling an unnamed work he asked us to listen to in “metaphorical darkness”.In a short speech at the start of the second half before Kolesnikov began a tintinnabulation at extremes of the piano register with ripple effects in between, he told us how his Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The bond between humans and animals sometimes passeth all understanding. Wildcat is the story of 20-something British Army veteran Harry Turner, American ecologist Samantha Zwicker, and a young ocelot called Keanu, who becomes an almost mythic talisman of Harry’s battle with post-traumatic stress and suicidal urges.Harry’s experience with the army in Afghanistan, where he’d served as an 18-year-old, had left him shattered and burned out. He was medically discharged suffering from recurrent depression and PTSD, his brain clanging with terrible images of violence and death. He recalled seeing a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What joy it is to have pantomime and Christmas shows back with full audiences up and down the country – everything from local shows to star-driven productions, many of them postponed from 2020 but with an awful lot happening in between to provide the topical references.Two star-driven shows lead the panto pack in London: it's great to see Ian McKellen back as the Dame in Mother Goose at the Duke of York's, while Julian Clary is The Spirit of the Beans in Jack and the Beanstalk (*****) at the London Palladium until 15 January.Clary, as you might expect, wrings every double entendre possible Read more ...
Nick Hasted
You may wonder: is this it? James Cameron’s Avatar sequel replays Earth’s colonial assault on Pandora in the original, cancelling out the blue-skinned native Na’vi’s victory under the Dances With Wolves-like, blue-white saviour command of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine mentally steering a genetically engineered Na’vi avatar.Sully has now merged into his avatar, and is chief of the jungle-dwelling Omaticaya, with an equally fearsome wife and five kids (including Sigourney Weaver as her previous character’s avatar’s teenage daughter, pictured below). Earth’s renewed assault Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It’s always hard to choose one album to spotlight come the annual Best Ofs, and 2022 has given us an extraordinary embarrassment of riches to choose from – the bountiful bastard…January brought with it a small but perfectly formed under-the-radar gem in Bed Wetter’s A Life in the Day. A deeply personal piece, it saw producer Geoff Kirkwood removing his Man Power mask and letting us in to his world of gorgeous, atmospheric sound sculptures.Andy Bell’s Flicker followed. A double album of wide-eyed eclecticism, Bell’s second solo outing felt simultaneously new and nostalgic. It was, without Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Ian McKellen, one of our greatest Shakespearean actors, gave us his acclaimed Widow Twankey at the Old Vic in 2004, some wondered why he had waited till he was in his sixties to perform in a leading role in pantomime (second comic policeman at Ipswich in 1962 doesn't count). Well, he has made us wait again for his second tilt at a Dame, but it was worth it.He dons false bosoms and frocks as Mother Goose, opposite genial comic John Bishop, here playing the straight man as her husband, Vic. Mother Goose has opened her animal sanctuary in a closed-down Debenhams, and owes those evil energy Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
St Mark’s shadow fell gloriously over the Wigmore Hall last night with a programme of Christmas music performed in, or inspired by, the great basilica of Venice. The Dunedin Consort braided festive works from pioneers who wrote for its grandly sonorous spaces – Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Grandi – with pieces by their German visitor and student Heinrich Schütz, culminating with his Christmas Story (1660).No one knows better than the Dunedins’ director John Butt how risky it is to posit historical “authenticity” for any interpretation of music composed four centuries or more ago (he wrote a Read more ...