TV
Dame Edna Rules the Waves / The Graham Norton Show, BBC One review - two ways to run a talk showTuesday, 31 December 2019
Talk shows can go one of two ways. You can create a welcoming space where your guests can kick their shoes off and start telling daringly revealing anecdotes. Alternatively, there’s the Dame Edna formula where the guests are cannon fodder for the... Read more... |
The Trial of Christine Keeler, BBC One review - famous sex scandal makes uneven dramaMonday, 30 December 2019
One good Sixties brouhaha deserves another. After last year’s triumphant revival of the Jeremy Thorpe affair in A Very English Scandal, here comes the sleazy saga of John Profumo, the Conservative Secretary of State for War who was forced to resign... Read more... |
Best of 2019: TVMonday, 30 December 2019
As symbolic moments go, the arrival of Martin Scorsese's new gangster epic The Irishman on Netflix took some beating. It exemplified the adage that "TV is the new cinema", and at the same time perhaps suggested a new and less digestible adage,... Read more... |
Liam Gallagher: As It Was, BBC Two review - no expletives deleted in exhausting rock-docMonday, 30 December 2019
Liam Gallagher knows exactly how "fucking fantastic… and fucking shit I am", and proceeds to tell us so for 85 minutes. This 10-year documentary project came about as a result of director Charlie Lightening’s friendship with Gallagher, formed... Read more... |
Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special, BBC One - a big cwtch from BarryThursday, 26 December 2019
What joy to be back with the Shipman and West families, created by writing team James Corden and Ruth Jones. It has been 10 years since sitcom Gavin & Stacey left our screens, and in this Christmas special there was some catching up to do as the... Read more... |
Martin's Close, BBC Four review - where did the scary bits go?Wednesday, 25 December 2019
The series of short films, A Ghost Story For Christmas, became a Yuletide staple on BBC One in the 1970s. Most of them were adapted from the works of medieval scholar M R James, and drew their unsettling supernatural aura from the understated and... Read more... |
Cinderella: After Ever After, Sky 1 review - preposterous fairytale sequel tweaks the funny boneWednesday, 25 December 2019
This divertingly daft sequel to the Cinderella story (Sky 1) was the brainchild of David Walliams, who introduced it as himself, sitting smugly by a roaring fire in his authorial smoking jacket. What, he wondered, happened after Cinderella and... Read more... |
Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?Tuesday, 24 December 2019
This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, BBC One review – Dickens classic recast as gruelling horror storyMonday, 23 December 2019
If you came to this expecting to be reminded of such ghosts of Scrooges past as Alastair Sim or Bill Murray, you will have been reaching either for the brandy or the defibrillator. In the hands of screenwriter Steven Peaky Blinders Knight and... Read more... |
Heston's Marvellous Menu: Back to the Noughties, BBC Two review - ghost of food trends pastFriday, 20 December 2019
Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu. Tonight’s BBC Two programme had a rather theatrical premise: a chef recreating the complete dining... Read more... |
The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, BBC Two review - rehashed political history fails to set pulses racingWednesday, 18 December 2019
All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think? Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, is a dogged reporter who rarely seems to sleep, and here we watched as she... Read more... |
Charles I: Killing a King, BBC Four review - sad stories of the death of kingsWednesday, 18 December 2019
This three-part series by historian Lisa Hilton is a follow-up to her previous effort from last July, Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four). That examined his disastrous fall from power, and this first new programme opened just before Christmas... Read more... |
