In the Yorkshire town of Ackley Bridge, education is like war conducted by other means. As series three of the drama begins on Channel 4, we see that everything has changed at Ackley Bridge school since Valley Trust took it over. Most of the staff have been sacked, leaving head teacher Mandy Carter (Jo Joyner) stuck with a last-chance-saloon bunch of under-motivated replacements.With the exception of Deputy Head Mr Evershed, played by Downton’s Robert James-Collier suddenly looking a bit cool and groovy, the staff aren’t interested in engaging with the countless multicultural issues that come Read more ...

The surprisingly touching conclusion to BBC Two’s five-part chronicle of the Thatcher years was a masterpiece of contemporary history. Congratulations to producer Alice Fraser, director Pamela Gordon, and composer Alexandra Harwood for very fitting and emotive music (for once). Perhaps it has taken a female team to produce this portrait, warts and all, without a hint of the condescension still evidenced even now by a significant number of Margaret Thatcher’s male contemporaries.Some of the best known survivors of her government delivered their highly personal views with astonishing frankness Read more ...

Shoving a child-eating drag-queen witch into an oven can't be good for any kid's psyche. Director Timothy Sheader doesn't let us forget it in a production which nevertheless treads a fine line between the darkness of the Grimm story and the fairytale incandescence which is a given of this masterly opera. There's deep magic in an amphitheatre of real trees complete with birdsong – the onstage wood is made of witches' planted broomsticks – with performances of a uniformly high standard from the first of two casts, and bewitching sounds from select players of the English National Opera Orchestra Read more ...

According to their mother, Luda (played by Madeleine Worrall, pictured below), each of the three sisters (pictured top) in Napoli, Brooklyn, bears one of their father’s admirable traits. Tina (Mona Goodwin), the oldest, who left school early to earn money for the family in a factory job, has his strength. Vita (Georgia May Foote), who is smart but has been banished to a convent school for crossing her father, has his tongue. Francesca (Hannah Bristow), who by cutting her hair short precipitated the violent row, has his spirit. But really, the attributes Luda is describing belong to her, Read more ...

Having played their first concert just four years ago, the Chineke! Orchestra gave a rousing, exuberant performance for an ensemble still in its infancy. It’s a young orchestra, not just in the sense of only being founded a few years ago, but one that comprises many young players too. Though its youthful passion and energy was very much to the fore, there were some points in Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No 1 when a lack of experience let them down. The violins’ tone in the opening of the third movement, "Anitra’s Dance", was a little coarse, and a distinct disconnect between the bassoons Read more ...

Frank Skinner walks onstage without introduction and a man in the audience gives him a friendly heckle by way of greeting. Skinner is straight on it, engaging him in a brief conversation; his responses are amiable enough but have a few barbs too.That's a Skinner hallmark: his smiley demeanour suggests a bloke you might have a nice chat with, but he doesn't suffer fools. And if the comic does less stand-up than broadcasting these days (his last new show was four years ago), he hasn't lost the art of the sly putdown.This hour-long set is a sort of preamble to his longer touring show, Showbiz, Read more ...

Charismatic, full of vital elan to the end, inconsistent, fitfully creative, a casually anti-semitic Conservative Catholic married to two of the greatest Jewish artists, Alma Mahler/Gropius/Werfel née Schindler can never be subject to a boring biography. A child of her fin de siècle time, torn between the need to be free and the will to inspire great figures, she was all too often gauged by the men who loved and tried to dominate her. Cate Haste gives us their verdicts, but the picture drawn from Alma's diaries and autobiographies only confirms the general portrait.There's little new here, Read more ...

In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 was issued by Warner Bros. in October 2003. Hitting shops in time for Christmas, it mixed hits like “Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon” and “Orange Crush” with album and soundtrack cuts, and a couple of previously unissued tracks. Released as an 18-track CD, it was initially issued as double-disc set with the additional material drawn from B-sides, more film soundtracks and live performances. There was also a Europe-only double-album version featuring the core 18 tracks.That vinyl version has sold for between £40 and £220. At the time of writing, copies Read more ...

They showed up with a 30+ song setlist, four costume changes and a floating platform, but the strongest moment of the Backstreet Boys’ tour was when they dispensed with all of that for an a cappella version of “Breathe”, from new album DNA.“Like we used to do it,” Howie Dorough explained. “Not a lot of people know we started out as an a cappella group.”More than a quarter of a century after their formation in Orlando, Florida, the Backstreet Boys’ live show draws more from their recent two-year Las Vegas residency than doo-wop or harmonies. Unlike contemporaries such as Take That who, a Read more ...

There's something unsatisfying about the fact that Asif Kapadia's new documentary on the controversial 1980s sporting legend Diego Maradona has a two-word title. It would have created a neat synchronicity with his previous two films (Amy and Senna), but we soon learn why this is the case.Kapadia's central thrust is the dichotomy of the public and private lives of a superstar, whose legend even the uninitiated are familiar with. The private figure is Diego – a sweet (self-described) mummy's boy from the slums of Argentina who rose through the sporting ranks to become the greatest football Read more ...

The best joke in Men in Black: International happens before the film starts, when the iconic Columbia Pictures lady in a toga whips out a pair of familiar dark glasses. It’s a nifty, witty gag that doesn’t outstay its welcome, which is more than can be said for the feature that follows. The original stars are absent and there’s an absence too of the screwball humour that made the first film, back in 1997 such a hit. Gone is Agent Tommy Lee Jones with his dry wit (or his simulacrum in Men in Black 3, Josh Brolin) and gone is Agent Will Smith with his gleeful energy. Instead we have two Read more ...

Forthright and often disturbing, Francis Bacon’s “male couplings” are also ambiguous, and it is this disjunction that gives them their power. Erotic, violent and yet so often tender, these 14 works from the 1950s to the 1970s restate Bacon's pre-eminence: surely no other artist has locked together sex and violence with such conviction. Bacon explores the relationship between two bodies, and specifically two male bodies – though gender is often left in doubt – with a frankness that feels like a physical blow. Vulnerability and intimacy are brought up short by brute strength: primal, Read more ...