TV
h 100 Awards: Broadcast - TV's national treasuresMonday, 13 August 2018
In the ever-expanding field of broadcast, it’s easy to get lost in the deluge of product raining down from swaggering global providers who sometimes seem to have more money than critical acumen. How gratifying, then, that some of the best of British... Read more... |
Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills?, BBC Four review - cold case solved?Thursday, 02 August 2018
They don’t make boxers like Freddie Mills any more. A granite lump of grinning charisma, he had a brow and jawline straight from a kids’ cartoon and, despite his humble origins and thuggish contours, a charmingly well-to-do voice. Mills was light... Read more... |
Age Before Beauty, BBC One review - mid-life makeover madnessWednesday, 01 August 2018
If you were looking for the antidote to Love Island, this might be just the job. Instead of airbrushed 20-something Instagram fanatics flaunting their “gym-honed” physiques in the Mediterranean sun, in Age Before Beauty (BBC One) writer Debbie... Read more... |
Hidden, Series Finale, BBC Four review - a whydunnit, not a whodunnitSunday, 29 July 2018
Some contend that this Snowdonia-set mystery was a Scandi hommage too far, a mere recycler of gloom-shrouded riffs familiar from the likes of The Bridge or The Killing. Well yes, there was that element to it, but if you stuck with it it grew into... Read more... |
The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, ITV review - the ludicrous in search of the preposterousThursday, 26 July 2018
Belatedly picking up from where series 2 of The Bletchley Circle left off in 2014, this comeback version has a go at transporting a couple of the original characters to the Californian West Coast, where they embroil themselves in the hunt for that... Read more... |
Who Is America?, Channel 4 review - sudden return of Sacha Baron CohenTuesday, 17 July 2018
Cunningly kept under wraps until the last moment, Sacha Baron Coen’s new show is a timely reminder of his gift for trampling the boundaries of good taste and decorum. But despite a certain amount of hyped-up pre-uproar, it doesn’t represent any... Read more... |
Unforgotten, Series 3, ITV review - death on the M1Monday, 16 July 2018
So it’s back to London’s Bishop Street police station for a third series of screenwriter Chris Lang’s cold case saga. The understated rapport of lead duo DI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and DS Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) has become one of TV’s... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, BBC One review - this summer's watercooler dramaFriday, 13 July 2018
How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama. Faced with the sudden disappearance of her... Read more... |
Picnic at Hanging Rock, BBC One review - camp girls' school gothicThursday, 12 July 2018
How many people were watching Picnic at Hanging Rock as it took its bow on BBC One? This opening episode happened to be preceded by a rival attraction on ITV. The premise of the story, set in Australia in 1900, is that almost no one sees three girls... Read more... |
Sharp Objects, Sky Atlantic review - Amy Adams battles her demonsTuesday, 10 July 2018
Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn (author of Gone Girl) and directed by Jean-Marc Valleé (who helmed last year’s award-winning Big Little Lies), HBO’s Sharp Objects arrives trailing a cloud of great expectations. Happily – albeit depressingly... Read more... |
Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars, BBC Two review - blues, booze and duesSunday, 01 July 2018
There’s undoubtedly a memorable film to be crafted from the life of guitar legend and grand old survivor Eric Clapton – for instance, Melvyn Bragg made a very good South Bank Show about him in 1987 – but the longer this one goes on, the less it has... Read more... |
Duran Duran: There's Something You Should Know / A Night In, BBC Four, review - chaps on filmSaturday, 30 June 2018
Forty years on. You could have got attractive odds on Duran Duran still being here when, on a yacht carving the seas off Antigua, a cream-suited Simon Le Bon mimed “Rio” astride an unapologetically phallic bowsprit. “A ripple in a stagnant pool,”... Read more... |
