Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Julian Fellowes admits he knows little about football and has always hated sport in general, but this hasn’t prevented him from writing a TV series (for Netflix) about football’s 19th century origins. While his other new series, ITV’s Belgravia, feels sharp and skilfully crafted, The English Game is more like a mud bath in the Scunthorpe Wednesday Evening League.His theme might be summed up as toffs and robbers. It’s set in the 1870s, when football (largely invented in public schools) was becoming organised under rules laid down by the Football Association, comprising mostly public school Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Like all other performers, the Indigo Girls were forced to make the “heart-breaking decision” to cancel their spring tour. And in that moment, “we knew we wanted to play a free livestream show,” Amy Ray and Emily Saliers said in a statement. “People are feeling scared, isolated, uncertain, and unmoored. For the public good, we all have to do our part not to gather in person, but we can still play music, and we are really looking forward to connecting with you on Facebook and playing a low-key, homegrown set of songs and talking to people directly through Q&A.”We in Britain are now, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
This patchwork of interviews and comments from male journalists and politicians interspersed with clips from television news and films, from The Godfather to The Avengers, was a zig-zag narrative of Dominic Cummings’s unique career as a political strategist. Complete with portentous throbbing music, this BBC Two film was also a Hamlet without the Prince. Cummings was seen in moments from broadcast programmes or filmed addressing his troops, like a kaleidoscope reflected in the opinions of others.Presenter Emily Maitlis elicited a variety of comments: he is fearless in his views (but what are Read more ...
Nick Hasted
St. Patrick’s Day, and socialising itself, has been all but cancelled. But turn the rickety door-handle of a bohemian pub near Brighton station, and a poignant scene is unfolding. The Irish poet Brendan Cleary’s reading has been officially called off, and the boozy crowd whose raucousness he would have had to ride has evaporated. Instead, he continues unpaid for a scattered few. The sight of these last drinkers fondly listening under candlelight will warm me in the months to come. It’s not quite Weimar, because no human monster is approaching to destroy us. But the lights are going out.Cleary Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
“I am not intense.” That declaration arrives early in Feel Good, the new Channel 4 and Netflix romantic comedy fronted by comedian Mae Martin, who plays a fictionalised version of herself. Over Mae’s shoulder, we see a literal trash fire. She’s lit up the evidence of a past drug addiction. It smoulders in the background while she smoulders in the front.This scene is Feel Good in miniature: it encapsulates Martin's brand of vulnerable, quirky comedy, pinned to her appeal as a character and a creator. The series is easy to watch and easy to like. Still, Feel Good has a hindrance. For a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Presenter Waldemar Januszczak suffers from something very like Robert Peston Syndrome, which makes him bellow at the camera and distort words as if they’re chewing gum he’s peeling off the sole of his shoe. Nonetheless he has a knack for finding fresh and revealing angles on art history, as he aims to do in this new series.Vincent Van Gogh’s painting Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear is frequently taken to be the pitiable proof of the artist’s hopeless derangement, another step along the road to his eventual suicide by gunshot, but Januszczak gradually revealed a more nuanced and much more Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It may offer veteran French star Catherine Deneuve as substantial and engaging a role as she has enjoyed in years, but the real surprise of The Truth is that it’s the work of Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda. The director, whose Shoplifters took the Palme d’Or at Cannes two years ago, has made a distinctive move away from his native environment – and, no less importantly, language: apart from a few scenes played in English, this is a French-language piece – in a film that catches the tone and nuances of French cinema with a finesse that’s as delightful as it is convincing.Occasionally it feels Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Adapted by Kate O’Riordan from her own novel, Penance is a taut little thriller spread over three consecutive nights. It’s not going to rock the planet off its axis, but there’s enough twisty and salacious intrigue to keep you coming back.There’s a deluxe, feature-film-like quality about the production, and its pedigree cast doesn’t hurt. Julie Graham plays Rosalie Douglas, a 50-ish former care-worker who now runs three of her own care homes. Her husband Luke is played by Neil Morrissey, who seems to have cornered the market on weak, feckless husbands and carries on the tradition here. Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Like it or not, we live – as Beethoven did – in interesting times. In place of the revolutions, wars and occupations that convulsed the cities he knew, we now confront a silent, invisible foe that breeds an equal terror. Hence the empty seats in the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday: a small proportion of the whole, but still noticeable. They greeted this unique concert, compèred by a top-flight celebrity, which gathered several of the best-loved works in the repertoire into one bumper package over a long Sunday afternoon.Directed by Gerard McBurney, narrated by Stephen Fry, and anchored by the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
The multi-talented Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar, Designated Survivor, House) took a two-year acting sabbatical in 2009 to work for the Obama administration. So he is, in theory, ideally placed to co-create, with Matt Murray, a semi-political TV sitcom about a New York City councillor.Councilman Garrett Modi (Modi is actually Penn’s real name) lets partying with Wall Street douchebags go to his head, is busted for driving on the expressway under the influence, then vomits on a police car and attempts to bribe the cops for a billion dollars. Of course, this goes viral and he’s soon pitching up Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“I’d like you to know that you can breathe as heavy as you like,” Morrissey declares, somewhat against government advice. “It really doesn’t matter. I can take it!” Like a cross between Elvis Presley and Donald Trump, this great, divisive pop star feeds off rallies of the faithful. If his upcoming, inevitable Vegas residency is among the mass gatherings we lose, it will leave both sides forlorn. “I love you and nothing, nothing will ever change that,” he adds of his relationship with his fans, near the end of a two-hour show heavily weighted to recent work. Much like Bob Dylan’s current sets Read more ...
David Nice
So Susanna and Figaro got married on Saturday, just before the entire Almaviva household and its home, the London Coliseum, went into quarantine. Let's at least celebrate the fact that these splendid singer-actors, with youth especially on the five main principals' side, saw so much hard work on forging an ensemble and co-ordinating as best they could with conductor Kevin John Edusei in the Coliseum's big, Mozart-unfriendly space come to fruition, if only for one night.Director Joe Hill-Gibbins, a genuinely original force in theatre whose Edward II at the National shook up the literalism of Read more ...