TV
Jasper Rees
Should the BBC take the piss out of itself? Of course we must all laugh at our own failings, but the function of satire is to laser in on the faults of others for comedic ends. Isn’t it? The satirist's task is to point the finger elsewhere. Juvenal and Swift and Hislop don’t get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “Christ, I’m hilariously bad at what I do. I must tell the world.”So what are we to make of W1A? John Morton, the great anthropologist of Planet Lanyard, was granted permission to do to the BBC what he had done to the organisation of the London Olympics. But where Twenty Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
You haven’t had to actually watch the brutal executions staged by Islamic State (IS, or ISIS or ISIL, as it’s also known) to register them: just a single image registered has been more than enough to horrify. Managing to penetrate the world’s consciousness to such an extent has surely been one of the terror group’s most singular achievements. As one contributor to This World’s latest bulletin from the frontlines of Islamism, World’s Richest Terror Army, put it, the organization combines an ideology drawing on seventh-century principles with a 21st-century grasp of social media technology. In Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The title is, of course, ironic. The house in question is a rambling refurbished dwelling deep in the Lake District, reached by driving through lonely wind-blasted valleys and across rain-thrashed hillsides. It's where a former policeman, known only as Robert (Christopher Eccleston), has come to heal himself after a traumatic near-death experience.Writer Michael Crompton hasn't been squeamish about mixing up a bubbling cocktail of favourite thriller ingredients – murder, revenge, terror, isolation – and this first of four parts sped along urgently, conveying a sense that it knew exactly where Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Lest the BBC Four imprint prove not strong enough a signal, I'll say it loud and clear: don't go into this expecting Strictly, kids. On the evidence of last night's contemporary dance showdown, the first of four section finals, the brand new BBC Young Dancer competition is light years from the razzmatazz, sparkling scoreboards and celebrity judge infighting of the BBC One dance flagship.The first minutes offered the briefest sketch of contemporary dance's history and a couple of major choreographers as talking heads: distinctly more documentary than docu-soap. The ever-thoughtful and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Who says satire is dead? After this, I would imagine just about everybody. According to Jon Culshaw, one of the prime movers in ITV's new puppet-CGI farrago Newzoids [*], this isn't just Spitting Image revisited because "the puppets have got more of a spikiness, more of an edgy exaggeration to them." You think? One other difference he forgot to mention was that Spitting Image was often really rather good.Where did it all go wrong? Of course, Spitting Image profited hugely from being the product of the Thatcher era, when the political battle lines were starkly drawn and the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“A place of ravishing beauty that would completely stop you in your tracks.” So said Christine Bleakley as she introduced the first episode of this six-part series, during which she travels along the Wild Atlantic Way on Ireland's west coast, from County Donegal in the north to County Cork in the south, 15,000 miles of rugged coastline formed over millions of years by the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean.The presenter was speaking about Malin Head, Ireland's most northerly point, but she could have been talking about almost any part of the island of Ireland. It's a tiny country but boy does it Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
I’ve got no idea what the opposite of dumbing down might be. Swatting up? Whatever it is, it’s surely going to set the tone for the next couple of Friday nights on BBC Two, where Sex and the Church is as erudite a piece of television as we’re going to get in a long time. The fact that it’s on Two, which was home to presenter Diarmaid MacCulloch’s previous series A History of Christianity and How God Made the English, further encourages: this new one would certainly have fitted in on BBC Four, so it must have been past ratings that have kept MacCulloch on the senior channel.I confess I’d never Read more ...
Jasper Rees
DNA: there’s a lot of it about. Random Googling reveals that, just in the past few days, a new study claims arachnophobia may be programmed into our DNA, that the British share 30 percent of their DNA with the Germans, while in the USA they’re using DNA to track down dog owners who don’t scoop poop. This last may not be what Leicester University geneticist Professor Alec Jeffreys had a mind when he developed techniques in DNA fingerprinting.Code of a Killer dramatises the case in which DNA was first used by police to pin a murder suspect to a crime scene (the concluding episode is broadcast Read more ...
mark.kidel
Dennis Marks, who has passed away at the young age of 66, was in every way larger than life. A talented and prolific music and arts documentary filmmaker, an inspired head of music for BBC Television, and artistic director of the ENO, he latterly reinvented himself as a consummately erudite and warm-voiced broadcaster who took his listeners on fascinating journeys down the Danube and along the Appian Way.Dennis was a true European, with a clarity of intellect honed in some of the best British educational institutions (Haberdashers and Cambridge), but with ears and eyes that avidly took Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
All the politicians lined up to chorus "Je suis Charlie" after the nauseating massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January, but three months later, how is that emotional declaration of solidarity against murderous extremism holding up? For this documentary, British Muslim Shaista Aziz went to Paris to find out.Her inquiries suggested that France is split in two over the issue of Western values versus Islamic fundamentalism. So is much of the rest of Europe, but France's rigorous insistence on maintaining the state's secular status, and therefore banning such faith-based Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There was a distinct lack of giraffe or spiny ant-eater or even ant in The Ark. The animals went in none by none in the BBC’s visit to the Old Testament. When the deluge finally came on, it was only the human race which was saved from the watery wrath of God. Our furry and feathered friends never got the call. They say don’t work with animals, but this was taking liberties with holy writ.Meanwhile theologians will be poring over the text for arcane signs which might reveal why this was on in Easter week, an area of the calendar when they generally tend to favour the last few chapters of the Read more ...
fisun.guner
Louis Theroux just wants to make good television. This may seem an obvious thing to say of a programme-maker, but many programme-makers concerned with the kind of human interest story that Theroux has made his own, often want to do more than this. They want to understand subject and motive, to get under the skin of a thing, or perhaps somehow resolve an issue. They believe, and sometimes perhaps they may even be right, that this in itself will produce good television, or at least go most of the way there. Theroux’s ambitions are clearly much simpler. He wants to tease out stories – Read more ...