TV
Adam Sweeting
The idea of the suburban superhero isn't exactly a road not taken in the annals of TV history. We've had Heroes, Misfits, and even Ardal O'Hanlon as Thermoman in My Hero, not to mention generationally recurring stuff like Bewitched and The Bionic Woman.In No Ordinary Family, the titularly evoked Powells are the latest to join this rich heritage of the overachievers next door when they acquire mysterious powers after a trip to Brazil, having crash-landed in an Amazon swamp after their light aircraft ran into a sudden storm. Evidently there was something in the water, which has left mom, pop Read more ...
josh.spero
As with pornographic films, what those who watch Glee really want is the money shot. There may be far fewer naked people – although the first episode of the second season did have lascivious shots of two shirtless (allegedly) teenage boys – but you still don’t really care about the bits in between the songs, which are all trite teen drama with a smart-mouth twist. No, the moment the plumber (geeky teenager) appears on the scene with his wrench (sheet music) is what gets the nerves tingling.And so this episode proved, and so probably will the season prove. In case you care about the bits in Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Episodes may prove to be the zenith of television’s obsession with making television about making television. It was certainly a handy primer for anyone who fell asleep around 2000 (perhaps during My Hero; you are forgiven) and missed all the dominant strands of TV comedy emerging over the next decade. We hadn't simply been here before; Episodes was incubated in the post-ironic, multilayered comedic landscape in which we all now live. The success of the US version of The Office was referenced within the first five minutes. I’m surprised it took so long.Episodes seems to want to have it all: Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Few would dispute the supremacy of Cranford and Lark Rise to Candleford among the BBC’s current fleet of costume dramas. Measured, domestic and infinitely gentle, there are no Machiavellian footmen or illicit trysts here, just wholesome country adventures championing those unfashionable values of honesty, neighbourliness and hard work. The lamentable histrionics of the recent Upstairs Downstairs could have done well to note these successes, adapting material free from obvious drama (and in the case of Flora Thompson’s autobiographical trilogy, almost entirely without plot) and fashioning from Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
What better to brighten our morbid January nights than the return of this superior Chicago-based legal drama? The Good Wife has never attracted lurid publicity or been afflicted with cutting-edge trendiness, but instead relies on the somewhat Germanic characteristics of being fastidiously designed and impeccably constructed.Co-creators Robert and Michelle King and executive producers Tony and Ridley Scott have grasped the importance of building the show on pin-sharp writing allied with sympathetic casting, with the result that The Good Wife consistently achieves a seamless balance between Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There was always going to come a time when Little Britain had to stop. For a couple of years the heavily milked franchise seemed to be on a tape loop on BBC Three. Its international expansion - to the Greek islands one Christmas, to America for an entire series – suggested that its stars were getting itchy feet. That hankering to grow wings has manifested itself in the form of Come Fly With Me, a spoof docusoap in which Matt Lucas and David Walliams present an entirely new set of grotesques. In last night’s third episode, the gallery was still growing.It’s a risky strategy. When Harry Enfield Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In 1994 half a million Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered over a period of six weeks. Among them were the four brothers and two sisters of Jean-Pierre Sagahutu. His mother was raped before she too was killed. His father, a doctor, was intercepted on the way to the hospital and, when he was unable to pay a fine at a roadblock, was pulled from his car, hit over the head with a blunt hoe and taken to a ditch where his body was dumped. Rwanda, to which three million refugees have returned as the economy has tripled, is known as the great success story of Africa. But as this riveting film suggested, Read more ...
fisun.guner
What’s with the two titles? A crime drama so good that they had to name it twice? Or couldn’t anyone in production decide which one to ditch? Why not swap them around, or maybe call it "Prime Suspect", or "Prime Suspect: Deadly Intent", or variations thereof? (OK, perhaps not "Prime Suspect: Above Suspicion", which would kind of cancel the other one out, but you get my drift.) Indeed, Lynda La Plante’s titles are so irritatingly, meaninglessly generic that they’d fit just about any old plot with a vaguely criminal theme. But then, her plots are generic, so I suppose as long as they’ve got Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There must be good reasons why the fine crime novels of Michael Dibdin have been absent from screens large and small. They're probably to do with Dibdin's deadpan satirical tone and the anti-heroic nature of his protagonist, the Venetian detective Aurelio Zen. Also, his shrewd observations of the hidden undercurrents of Italian society are almost bound to get lost in screen translation. "Books and movies are completely different media", Dibdin once commented, "and the more the Hollywood crowd learns to knit their own stuff, the better."So, it's pleasing - perhaps even slightly miraculous - to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“There is a sense I very much get about this place. Italians know what life is for and they know it won’t last very long. And so they take advantage. I like that. Particularly at my age.” The last of several times I interviewed the British crime writer Michael Dibdin (1947-2007) was four years before his death. It was a freezing February morning in Bologna, where he was researching the 10th and (it turned out) penultimate book in the Aurelio Zen series. The interview was at 9am. In the fug of a crowded bar, Dibdin soaked up several espressi and a warming tot of grappa.Having concluded our Read more ...
josh.spero
All the time I was watching Toast last night, based on Nigel Slater’s memoir of his early years, I was wondering whether it was filmed for the benefit of the audience or of Slater himself. The final scene (no spoiler – we know how this story ends) where the young Slater ran away to join the kitchen at the Savoy was revealing: the head chef who gave him a job was played by Nigel Slater, reassuring his younger self that “you’ll be all right”. This felt more like therapy than drama.But who can deny the author his right to redemption, especially when he has had to survive Helena Bonham Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“Television is pretty awful at the moment,” said Eileen Atkins the other week. “Is that because I'm getting old?” Age wouldn’t dare to wither Dame Eileen, of course, who has just bounced back in fine sparky fettle in the BBC's remake of Upstairs Downstairs.She’s right – lots of television is awful. Always has been. On the other hand, there's now so much of it on so many channels that with a bit of judicious schedule-surfing and deft deployment of the various on-demand services now available, you can almost certainly find enough worthwhile stuff to stretch through the week. Also, it' Read more ...