TV
Jasper Rees
How much is too much of quite a good thing? They – whoever they are – always say that two series is the platonic ideal for the perfectly formed sitcom. The example forever cited is Fawlty Towers, joined latterly by The Office. To that short list you could now add Rev, which after two series ceased to be a comedy in order to become something else. While nothing like as well shaped as any of the above, Episodes looked to have ingested that wisdom, having terminated its second series with a satisfactory clash of cymbals featuring a thunderstorm, a showdown and a reunion kiss. Where to now?The Read more ...
Matthew Wright
At least no one can accuse BBC comedy of an obsession with youth and relevance with this one. In airing a trial episode of Monks, an idea that’s been lurking in their ideas department for over ten years, the corporation’s comedy team is focusing on a lifestyle that was largely banished from English life by Henry VIII. There are some good jokes and amusing sketch-scenes, but their targets slap the forehead of obviousness every time, while the characters - especially Mark Heap’s angry and repressed deputy abbot Francis, Justin Edwards’ hapless loser Brother Bernard, and Angus Deayton’s satin- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After a tentative start, and several episodes of insipidity, Sarah Phelps's World War One nursing drama started to hit its straps just as series one reached its conclusion. The pace accelerated, the characters flung off their camouflage of tepid blandness, and suddenly everyone was struggling with crises, guilt and dark secrets.At heart The Crimson Field is a soap in uniform, with its manufactured climaxes and blithe leaps from implausible event to absurd coincidence, but it's powered along by a formidable cast whose acting has grown stronger by the TV hour. The final episodes were dominated Read more ...
Andy Plaice
Remember that classic moment from the 1984 sitcom starring the chaps from Madness when their mate suddenly appears and makes them jump? No, of course you don’t, it was never shown, and what a blessing that was judging by a glimpse of it from BBC Two's documentary celebrating 50 years of its own comedy output.Some of the best – and worst – moments of half a century of programme-making were dusted off and given an airing, complemented by a starry cast of talking heads. Pilot episodes and cult comedy characters came under the spotlight, along with rarely seen archive extracts and a section on Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Almost 45 years after the publication of The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer - now 75 years old and working on a rainforest conservation project in her native Australia, but still “full of bile” - thinks that it is time for a new analysis; a go-to feminist text as succinct and divisive as the one that she created in 1970. These days it is men that are experiencing the identity crisis, she tells Kirsty Wark; now that women are free of the restrictions created by expectation that prevented them from entering traditionally male-dominated spaces like the workplace, politics, the media and gaming it Read more ...
Jasper Rees
How amusing is death? When stand-ups fail to get laughs on stage, they call it dying, because the silence is like the grave. When actors laugh when they’re not supposed to on stage or on camera, it’s called corpsing because it kills the scene. They can do birth, marriage, divorce and illness, but death is the one part of the journey a comedian can’t turn into first-person material. Not even Tommy Cooper, who literally died on stage. But if anyone can find the funny side, it is surely Billy Connolly.That at least is the thinking behind his new documentary, which sends him hunting for jokes in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It wasn't a bad idea to change the scenery by locating the belated ninth season of 24 in London, even if they probably nicked the idea from The Bourne Ultimatum, and episode one opened with a passing shot of an East End mosque just to set the paranoia clock ticking. Nonetheless, despite scenes of grimy railway viaducts, derelict warehouses and traffic-choked streets, large stretches of this curtain-raising pair of episodes still took place inside the kind of dimly-lit operations rooms which have become the show's trademarks. The CIA's London HQ is full of tight-lipped operatives wearing Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This had all the makings of a celebrity backslapathon of nauseous proportions, but it turned out to be a painfully touching exploration of the fragility of fame. Not that this means we have to feel sorry for filthy-rich pop stars and happy-chappy light entertainers, but it does mean we have to grudgingly accept that some of them may be human after all.Corden and Barlow made an improbably well-contrasted pair. Corden came on like a chubby labrador puppy, almost peeing himself with delight at the chance to spend quality time with his favourite pop idol. Barlow remained laconic and slightly Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Reason, tolerance, liberalism…these are the qualities that defined the Georgian Age, and for which it deserves to be better known, and more widely admired. Lucy Worsley stated her argument with admirable clarity in the opening moments of the programme, and her intellectual confidence and rigour made this one of the most informative and enjoyable of the many recent BBC history series. Worsley breezed through the historical landscape of the age, uncovering crucial aspects of politics, religion, art, satire, and finance. She span a fascinating web of connections and created a vivid portrait of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
A move from E4, where sketch duo Cardinal Burns's debut series was shown, to Channel 4 is a significant jump. A bigger budget (one presumes), a broader target demographic and the confidence of your employers should act as a fillip to performers; on the evidence of last night's opener to their second series, that confidence was well placed.Seb Cardinal and Dustin Demri-Burns have developed their craft since 2012 and a Bafta nomination; they've kept a few favourites – the Office Flirts, Banksy the suburban dullard who tries to daub walls by night, Yumi (pictured below) the giggly Japanese girl Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There is no one writing more brilliantly for television at the moment. Sally Wainwright’s star has risen on the back of two hugely popular series that, more or less cheerfully, celebrate women of a certain age. After the female buddy cop show Scott & Bailey came Last Tango in Halifax, a romantic comedy for pensioners with troubled daughters. Put them together and what have you got? Happy Valley stars Sarah Lancashire as a copper in rural West Yorkshire, but turns out to be rather more than a plucky merger of Wainwright’s twin interests in policing and life in the windswept northern moors. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"Policeman wrongly accused of murder" is possibly not history's most original story idea, but in Prey, writer (and TV debutant) Chris Lunt has turned it into a platform for a skilfully-controlled thriller that keeps your brow sweaty and your breath coming in short panicky gasps. It's greatly assisted by having John Simm playing the lead role of Manchester-based DS Marcus Farrow, since there's nobody better when you want a bit of earthy-but-sincere, with added soulfulness.Though we first met Farrow in the aftermath of a road accident, when he was trapped in the back of an upside-down police Read more ...