TV
Marina Vaizey
If only the Duchess of York had waited two more days, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II could have shared her natal date with St George, Shakespeare and Turner. But the Queen Mother did bequeath a sense of duty (as did George VI) and perhaps of equal importance, a sturdy physicality. She died at 101, in contrast to her chain-smoking husband's demise at 56. And so here is Her Majesty still hard at work and marking the 90th birthday with a sequence of home movies to share with the nation. The royal advisers, and one suspects Prince Charles, whose strangulated speech is the oddest Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Victoria Wood was a very private national treasure. Not for her the tawdry catwalk of Twitter nor the klaxon of the confessional memoir. She wasn't comfortable talking to journalists and when she found one whom she could just about trust, she stuck with them. That is how I found myself interviewing her many times over the years, and came to see past the carapace of jollity that was her performance persona. The first time I met her was, weirdly, for a supermarket magazine. She could barely believe it herself, having endured quite severe food issues over many years. Inevitably those came Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
So just how grey were the 1950s? "It was grey," said Bruce Welch of The Shadows. Au contraire, said Joan Bakewell, the Fifties were "giddy and full of optimism." Veteran journalist Katharine Whitehorn added that not only were the Fifties not boring, but that even then people had already heard of sex.But this was Tom Jones's film, and in his view "the early Fifties were grey and boring and flat." Born in June 1940, the then Thomas Woodward spent his formative years in Pontypridd, and in the foggy old films and photos of it included here the town resembled some ghastly failed experiment in Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In 2014 the Channel 4 series Confessions looked at the changing face of the old professions. In the programme about doctors, one GP remembered the standard practice of deploying acronyms on patient notes that looked like arcane medical terminology but were in fact nothing of the sort. One of them was NFN, which meant Normal for Norfolk.It’s not quite clear why a new docusoap of that name has adopted it. East Anglian safe spacers may be triggered into a sense of mortal offence followed by noisy excommunication for BBC Two. The title is more harmless than it looks. This is yet another Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
The pampered bureaucrats who commission television drama have suffered from tunnel vision for years. Today a thriller series must feature at least four of the following: a family in peril; a dysfunctional investigator; foreign baddies; terrorism; cybercrime; a Chinese connection; striking camera angles and colour filters; moody music; and, above all, a pervasive feeling of dread.The Tunnel: Sabotage, which began on Sky Atlantic last night (with all episodes now available via Sky Box Sets), has the blooming lot. The first series, a cross-channel version of The Bridge, closely echoed its Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The BBC opened its examination of the history of European togetherness with presenter Nick Robinson beaming at us from the top of those White Cliffs, looking out at the glistening sea which made us an island (until, of course, Mrs Thatcher supported the Channel Tunnel).This inconclusive history of Britain in and out of Europe began at the very end of the Second World War, when the eloquent proposer of a united Europe which definitely included West Germany was Sir Winston Churchill. This first episode of two, subtitled "An Island Apart", set the scene with two ex-politicians, Hague and Blair, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When it aired on BBC One at the dawn of the Seventies, Doomwatch became one of the marvels of the broadcasting age, sometimes pulling audiences of over 13 million. Thanks to the keen imagination of its creator, Dr Kit Pedler – a gifted scientist and environmental campaigner – it possessed an apparently clairvoyant ability to seize on cutting-edge scientific ideas and their potential for running dangerously amok.Pedler teamed up with screenwriter Gerry Davis, with whom he'd previously created the Cybermen for Doctor Who, and between them they delivered a programme which struck a chord Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If this were a British series it would be called 22.11.63, since the title refers to the date on which President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Anyway, this is a TV version of Stephen King's hit novel, and its mix of historical conspiracy and time-travelling sci-fi is perfect fodder for its producer, JJ Abrams.You have to swallow a fairly hefty portion of disbelief to allow yourself to get into the story, namely that the homely neighbourhood diner in Maine run by Al Templeton (Chris Cooper) has a porthole through time hidden in the pantry. Every time you walk in there, you're Read more ...
graeme.thomson
I interviewed Merle Haggard once and he’s a slippery old snake: dry, reserved and fiercely intelligent, with an ornery pride and an oft-used gift for riling people. I’m not sure we got to know him all that much better after Gandulf Hennig’s superb documentary Learning to Live with Myself, but it was a hell of a ride none the less. A man with hidden depths buried inside his hidden depths, Haggard said towards the end of the film that he had struggled his whole life to achieve his aim of being “self-contained, totally”. He wasn't about to go all therapy-speak on our asses now.Filmed over three Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Can't get enough Scandi Noir? Then why not make your own? With the aid of Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of The Bridge and installed here as screenwriter, ITV has.Take one disturbed anti-heroine suffering from hallucinations and a disintegrating marriage, exhume a serial killer from the past who has apparently resumed his grisly activities, add a murky property development company happy to ride roughshod over planning regulations in pursuit of obscene profits, and season with gruesomely murdered corpses with plastic bags tied over their heads. Throw in a few shots of Blackfriars bridge and make a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The BBC Drama department can’t be faulted for reading the news. Last year London Spy riffed on the mystery of the corpse of the spy found in a suitcase in an MI6 safehouse. Now Undercover sinks its teeth into another juicy set of headlines about coppers who go into such deep cover they sire children with the activists they’re spying on.The title contains its own spoiler, but it takes most of the first episode for Undercover to reveal its hand. Ostensibly its protagonist is Maya Cobbina (Sophie Okonedo), a liberal black female barrister who we first encounter racing across the empty wastes of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
With a slightly changed cast and set-up from its Hogmanay-themed pilot, screened on New Year’s Eve 2015, this was the first of a six-part sitcom (written by Simon Carlyle and Gregor Sharp) about the residents of a street in suburban Glasgow.At its centre are Beth and Eric (Arabella Weir and Alex Norton), a middle-aged couple whose son, Ian (Jamie Quinn), has just decided to leave home and move in with his boyfriend, Jaz, but has yet to tell them. Two doors down live Cathy (Doon Mackichan, acting up a storm) and Colin (Jonathan Watson), while two doors down the other way are Christine and her Read more ...