TV
Adam Sweeting
Though Death in Paradise is an Anglo-French production filmed in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, the Frenchness seems to have mysteriously leaked away. Where Sara Martins was a long-standing regular as DS Camille Bordey, and other French actors have rotated through the cast, the only glimmer of Gallicness remaining in this seasonal special was the vestigial presence of Elizabeth Bourgine as Catherine Bordey (Camille’s mum, pictured below with Danny John-Jules as Dwayne Myers). Otherwise we might have been on Jamaica or Barbados or St Lucia, such was the general lack of any trace of the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The man whose name sounds like a major aviation accident, private detective Cormoran Strike, is back, with his sidekick Robin, for more of the lobster quadrille that is their relationship.This sixth series still uses those classy credits – footage of the leads in faded 1970s browns, with a typeface straight out of movies of that era and overlaid with Beth Rowley’s intense lyrics “You and me, me and you… I’ll walk beside you.” What follows is all too familiar as well: a dark new case that’s long-windedly puzzling and taxing. Ditto the pair’s continuing inability to declare the deep Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s rare to spot Keira Knightley in a TV series, and it’s no doubt a sign of changing times that she’s starring in this six-part spies-and-guns caper, penned by Joe Barton (of Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project fame).Set in a seasonally Christmassy London, it’s a twisty and fairly daft yarn about a dead Chinese ambassador, his missing daughter who has a heroin habit, a ruthless professional trigger man with a sentimental streak, and some murky Westminster chicanery. Then throw in the CIA and watch it all go off.Keira’s character, Helen Webb, is married to the Defence Secretary, Wallace Webb ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Brazilian Formula One triple-champion Ayrton Senna was already legendary during his lifetime, but his fatal crash at Imola in 1994 brought him virtual deification in his home country. The Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning, and half a million people turned out for his funeral.The Senna story was told to award-winning effect in Asif Kapadia’s documentary Senna (2010), but Netflix’s new series is the dramatised story of his life, produced by the Brazilian production company Gullane in collaboration with Senna Brands, the company created by the late driver’s family. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Is there only one Taylor Sheridan? His output is so prolific you’d think there must be half a dozen of them. Although little acknowledged in the UK, over the last decade Sheridan has been amassing an extraordinary string of credits that has made him one of the most significant players in Hollywood.He warmed up on the big screen, writing screenplays for Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River, which he described as his “modern American frontier” trilogy. It was a theme he would ring variations on through a string of hit TV series. Yellowstone and its spin-offs 1883 and 1923 have been giant Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You might assume that the “Has Fallen” in the title of this Anglo-French thriller connotes the presence of Scottish lunk Gerard Butler (as in Angel Has Fallen, London Has Fallen and Olympus Has Fallen), but there’s no Gerard in sight. Instead, in this TV spin-off from the movie series, we have Tewfik Jallab (pictured below) as protection officer Vincent Taleb, who’s acting as minder to France’s defence minister Philippe Bardin (Nathan Willcocks).When terrorist mayhem breaks out at a plush reception at the British Embassy in Paris, Vincent finds himself teaming up with feisty, fearless MI6 Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
“Previously on Wolf Hall…” It’s been nine years since Claire Foy memorably trembled her way to the block as Anne Boleyn, recapped at the start of the second and final season of the BBC’s handsome Hilary Mantel adaptation. It’s a deathbound affair for all, though.The author herself is now dead; the original actor playing the Duke of Norfolk, Bernard Hill, as well, with Timothy Spall taking his place. Henry VIII’s pustulant leg has reduced his gait to an ominous slow limp; Jane Seymour – whom, the cross-cutting in Peter Straughan’s script suggests, he seems to be marrying concurrently with Read more ...
The Day of the Jackal, Sky Atlantic review - Frederick Forsyth's assassin gets a modern-day makeover
Adam Sweeting
Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film The Day of the Jackal was successful thanks to its lean, almost documentary-like treatment of its story of a professional assassin methodically stalking his prey, French President Charles de Gaulle. Based on Frederick Forsyth’s novel, it also gained plausibility by being rooted in historical fact. In 1962 a group of disaffected army officers planned to kill de Gaulle after he granted independence to Algeria.However, Sky Atlantic’s reincarnation, scripted by Ronan Bennett, does away with almost all of that (although it does keep the bit where the shooter calibrates Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The latest true-crime adaptation about a murderous man and his female victims turns its star into a bloody mess on a hospital table, her vital signs flatlining. And that’s just halfway through, with two episodes to go. At least the second half of Until I Kill You offers less gruesome generic territory (spoilers ahead): the bungled police investigation of the assault; the sympathetic WPC assigned to the surviving woman, Delia Balmer (Anna Maxwell Martin, pictured below, left); the dangerously clumsy twists and turns of the justice system; the eventual resolution of this sorry saga. But Read more ...
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Disney+ review - the Boss grows older defiantly
Adam Sweeting
Director Thom Zimny has become the audio-visual Boswell to Bruce Springsteen’s Samuel Johnson, having made documentaries about the making of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen On Broadway and several more. Road Diary takes as its theme Springsteen’s 2023-4 tour, and uses that as a platform for an often emotional survey of his 50 year history with the E Street Band.This was the first time the E Street Band had been back on the road since 2017 (the Covid interregnum didn’t help), and there are some wry observations about scraping off the accumulated rust. Drummer Max Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
All three seasons of Industry are now on iPlayer, and after watching the most recent one and then backtracking for another look at the other two, I am still in two minds about it. With its forensic display of a toxic world where people are viewed as “capital” and anomie is the prevailing mode, is it masterly drama or an overheated mess? The pat answer would be, it’s both. Those two options become intertwined and indistinguishable the more you watch. Stylistically, it has a winning hand in its presentation of bouts of drink and drug-fuelled sex, wounding betrayals, vicious workplace Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Delirium has greeted Disney’s eight-part adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 1988 novel Rivals (part of her Rutshire Chronicles series).Perhaps it’s nostalgia for the previously-unloved Eighties, or maybe it’s because its non-stop conveyor belt of adultery, skulduggery and political incorrectness feels like some kind of liberation from the joyless paranoia of the 2020s. It also has lots of Eighties pop hits to keep it rattling along, from Tears for Fears and Blondie to ZZ Top and Depeche Mode.The rivals of the title are Rupert Campbell-Black, a former Olympic showjumper and now Minister for Sport in Read more ...