TV
Jasper Rees
I once sat in a rehearsal room in a brick-box theatre on the outskirts of Cape Town. The cast was warming up for Carmen. First, the choreographer put 40 mostly black South African singers through a gruelling physical warm-up. Opera singers are rarely slender, and they were all in a muck sweat by the time the vocal coach stepped forward to lead them through a vocal warm-up. But when they opened their mouths it was as if someone has strapped you to a chair in a wind tunnel. The noise was transforming, majestic, all-powerful. So I knew roughly what sound to expect in Singing for Life, a Read more ...
howard.male
Appropriately enough, Forever Young began with the primal beat of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life". What I consider to be Mr Pop’s “My Way” seems to perfectly sum up the pumped-up and apparently unstoppable forward momentum of the man himself and his against-all-the-odds lengthy career. But it could just as easily represent many of the world-weary yet resilient musicians interviewed in this unexceptional but nevertheless diverting documentary.Along with Iggy was the always-available-to-reminisce-to-camera Rick Wakemen, plus Robert Wyatt, Robin Hitchcock, Eric Burdon (or was it Fungus the Bogeyman’s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The world isn’t exactly sending up distress flares urgently demanding more cop shows, but this new effort from ER’s producer John Wells proves that the genre can still be cranked into life if the writing is strong and the performances feel authentic. Catching the precise tone is always critical, and evidently some pushing and shoving went on about exactly where Southland should be pitched. Its original Stateside host, NBC, started it at 10pm, planned to air the second series at 9pm, then dropped the show altogether. TNT snapped it up and restored it to its 10pm slot, which has also been Read more ...
graeme.thomson
It occurred to me halfway through Reunited that you could map the characters of This Life – the epochal house-share drama of the Nineties – on to those featured in Mike Bullen’s one-hour pilot feature and see little change in the terrain. All the tropes of modernity 2010-style – Google, Facebook, iPhones – were trotted into shot, but the premise was a dated one, while some of the supposedly edgy, zeitgeisty signifiers – white-painted bare walls, winking references to cocaine – were way off the pace. At least they didn't play any Portishead.Six former tenants of “a shared house in Stokey [ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The part played by Polish fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain has hardly gone undocumented, and the Hun-zapping exploits of the Polish 303 Squadron will be familiar to anyone with a historical interest in the subject, so you’d have to say that calling this film The Untold Battle of Britain was a wee bit of an exaggeration. Guy Hamilton’s 1969 Battle of Britain movie must be due for its umpteenth TV airing soon, and does of course feature the RAF’s Polish contingent, depicted as itching to get into action but being held back by grouchy group captains and sarcastic squadron leaders. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
If you happen to be in Trafalgar Square in London any time soon, you should take a close look at the friezes that adorn the ground portion of Nelson’s Column. For there you will find, most unexpectedly, that one of the sailors depicted is a black man, one of 1,400 non-British seamen among the 18,000 who took part in the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, 1805.That striking factoid comes from The Untold Battle of Trafalgar, the first in a four-part season, Bloody Foreigners on Channel 4, which aims to show how foreigners were at the heart of some of Britain’s most important historic events. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It doesn’t often happen that a new sitcom is born perfectly formed. The Royle Family, it was instantly clear, would do no wrong. And there was nothing much the matter with those things by Ricky Gervais. (I'd also make a case for The IT Crowd.) But maybe Rev has a harder trick to pull off. Unlike comedies which achieve their effects by formal daring, Rev operates within narrower strictures. It is in all essential respects a deeply traditional sitcom. It’s about a vicar, for goodness’ sake, who since Moses came down from the mountain has been more or less the ideal sitcom protagonist, being Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Alan Plater's final drama for television, Joe Maddison's War, is due to be screened on ITV this autumn. Fittingly, it gave the Jarrow-born Plater the opportunity to revisit his background in the north-east. The story is set on Tyneside during World War Two, and reflects the impact of the war on a closely knit group of working-class families. The cast looks a little like Plater's own extended family, since it includes Geordieland stalwarts Robson Green, Kevin Whately and Trevor Fox (of the latter, the writer commented that "he was sent on this earth to do my stuff").I interviewed Plater a few Read more ...
Jasper Rees
They don't make television writers like Alan Plater any more. He entered the profession when there was still an audience that could be relied upon to sit down in their millions and watch challenging drama from strands such as Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play. He made his name in that great academy of small-screen writing, Z Cars. Other than Dennis Potter, it's difficult to think of a writer who, though he also produced half a dozen novels and many stage plays including the memorable Peggy for You about the legendary theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, dedicated the greatest moments of a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Aeons ago, and in another place, I had a sense-of-humour malfunction. A sitcom about three priests marooned on a remote Irish island took its bow. I didn’t crack a single smile, and said so firmly. Turned out I was in a tiny minority, and just needed time for the flavours of Father Ted to make themselves known. Later, when it came back for a second series, I duly gave myself a very public flagellation. No such need with The IT Crowd, which last night began its fourth series.The common denominator of the two shows is Graham Linehan, the Irishman who co-wrote Father Ted but conceived, scripted Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Films about rock stars usually fail, because it's impossible to recreate whatever larger-than-life qualities made them unique and famous in the first place. You frequently end up with a slightly embarrassing party-piece impersonation that captures some of the mannerisms but misses the essence of the character.John Lennon continues to exert a strange fascination for film-makers, doubtless because he's the Martyred Beatle, but previous biopics have shrewdly homed in on lesser-known aspects of his life, so you weren't constantly comparing the celluloid version with what you knew of the real Read more ...
fisun.guner
It took Picasso four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but it took him a lifetime to paint like a child, or so he said. For Brancusi it wasn‘t a case of relearning childhood, but of being careful not to lose it in the first place. “When we are no longer children we are already dead,” he said. A little further down the food chain of contemporary art, Grayson Perry, the delightful transvestite potter who accepted his Turner Prize award as alter-ego Claire (because he likes to feel the prickle of humiliation when he’s dressed like Milly-Molly-Mandy in a crowd), evokes the spirit of Alan Read more ...