TV
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Britain, as Tamsin Greig’s soothing voiceover told us at the top of this hour, is a nation in love with its animals. Still, it’s unlikely that BBC Two is betting the house on this docu-soap, which will follow the lives of 10 students through their final year at the Royal Veterinary College and which is screening every night for the rest of this week. The cynic in me expects that the channel had a few too many episodes and not enough weeks before the next series of The Apprentice was due to begin.Which is a bit of a shame because, although Young Vets is hardly reinventing the genre - unless Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The best thing about The Great War: The People’s Story is the variety of intonations and accents that reveal the characters of the individuals whose letters, memoirs and diaries are collected in the programme. Last week’s opening episode caught all the gung-ho excitement that followed the declaration of war as men streamed along to join up. This second one brought us something darker, as we moved forward to 1915, with the “machine of death” already reaping its toll.The People’s Story will run to four episodes, each of which concentrates on four individuals whose stories last as long as their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fantastic is the only word for The Changes. Fantastic as in fantasy, and fantastic because it's a television drama that's brilliantly conceived and impeccably executed – and also because it tackles issues of social cohesion and fragmentation head-on without using a sledgehammer. Broadcast by the BBC in 1975, The Changes was a ten-part series adapting Peter Dickinson's trilogy of novels The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil's Children.The series tells how a sudden, inexplicable change transforms British society. Made with serious intent, it was for children and broadcast in a tea- Read more ...
Florence Hallett
If the idealised human body forms the heart of the classical tradition in Western art, the close study of nature is its lifeblood. It is inevitable then that artists have sought better to understand anatomy, and there are many examples of artists whose knowledge of the human body was more than skin deep. A century or so ago, Henry Tonks’ early career as a surgeon was essential to the character of his work as a painter and draughtsman, while the corpse in The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, 1632, is sufficiently accurate to suggest that Rembrandt had first-hand knowledge of a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The role of women during the First World War has been heavily mythologised in a way that has cast them as both the angels of the home front and a force for positive political change. What made this documentary, written and presented by revered war correspondent Kate Adie, so fascinating was that as well as providing a comprehensive guide to the many roles played by women during the conflict, it blew some of those myths wide open.For example, although the lives of most women in 1914 were defined “more by what you couldn’t do than what you could”, the history books tend to leave out the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Village got its commemoration in early. While the First World War has been on every broadcaster’s to-do list 100 years on, Peter Moffat’s portrait of rural life covered 1914-18 in 2013. The first series was not, it may be safely contended, a lot of fun. So all-encompassing was the miserablism that after six hours you weren’t sure whether to swallow a bottle of anti-depressants or throw a brick at a mansion.The good news is the war is over and things may just be looking up. In one giant stride The Village has caught up with Downton Abbey and entered the roaring Twenties. You know the sort Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We call it the First World War, but in Western Europe at least, most of the scrutiny is confined to what happened to Britain, France and Germany (with a side order of Russia) from 1914-18. The writer and presenter of this two-part series, David Olusoga, seized the opportunity to emphasise the full global scope of the conflict by throwing fascinating light on the contributions made by troops from the French and British colonies, uncomprehendingly transported from India and Africa to the mud, blood and horror of the Western Front.Beginning with the revelation that the first shot fired by the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
No one knows better than Kay Mellor that people from all walks are brought together by common experience. Being on the game in Band of Gold. Wanting to lose weight in Fat Friends. And no experience is more common than pregnancy. Hence In the Club, a new series focused on an ante-natal class.When Mellor was pregnant, you can guess her cravings. Drama. Lashings of it. Huge great ice cream scoops on burnt toast with extra toppings. We’ve been going for only an hour and we’ve already had a bank robbery, a possibly fatal car crash, unexpected twins, not to mention an unexpected birth, plus a Read more ...
fisun.guner
We’ve had only two poll tax riots in England. And since England has only twice legislated for a tax on the person, this proves rather a decisive verdict on its popularity. The last lot was in 1991, and though many protesters may have wished for the head of Margaret Thatcher, no one was beheaded.The earlier uprisings resulted in several lopped heads, including that of Wat Tyler, a name that should be familiar to anyone with some passing knowledge of England’s medieval past. The violent uprisings of 1381, led by Tyler, only came to be known as the Peasants’ Revolt in the 19th century. The Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
As we approach the anniversary of the beginning of World War I, the television schedules devoted to it are becoming denser and denser. In volume, at least, rather more than insight. We wonder just what more can be broadcast, after all, about the history concerned that has not already been said at some point in the century that has followed the conflict's tragic onset?Jan Peter’s ambitious Great War Diaries answers two questions that remain relevant, namely, just how did it really feel, and then, what was it like for those on the other side(s)? One of the more impressive programmes we have Read more ...
Florence Hallett
If, like me, you switched this on feeling sheepish about your sketchy knowledge of Chinese art, you would have welcomed as a ready-made excuse the news that some monuments synonymous with Chinese culture are relatively recent discoveries. It seems unthinkable that the terracotta army guarding the burial site of China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the stuff of legend and rumour until 1974, but it turns out that much of the 22-square-mile area occupied by the memorial is still to be explored and it could be another century before the site is fully excavated.We have all seen those eerie Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A few years ago I sat high up in a rapt, sweltering Albert Hall as a lone pianist performed for two hours in the round. Neither before nor since has the BBC Proms treated a classical musician like a rock god. But then Lang Lang, whether his music-making causes you to cheer or shudder, was and remains the poster boy of a cultural revolution. A few weeks earlier he'd opened the Olympic Games in Beijing.That afternoon he duetted with two guests: his father on the Chinese erhu, representing China’s musical past, and a nine-year-old pianistic prodigy called Marc Yu representing the slightly Read more ...