TV
The Culture Show: Henry Moore, BBC TwoThursday, 18 March 2010
What emerges from tonight’s Culture Show on Henry Moore, which examines how the sculptor exploited the media (and vice versa), is not the difference between the media of sculpture and television but the similarity. Rather than a simple programme... Read more... |
The Berlusconi Show, BBC TwoWednesday, 17 March 2010
Imagine if Rory Bremner had been banned from British television for the past 20 years, and Gordon Brown had put pressure on the BBC to get rid of Question Time because it had been critical of him. In the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi these things... Read more... |
Glee, E4Monday, 15 March 2010
Rarely has a TV series been so easy to like and so tricky to define. If you shoved High School Musical, American Idol and The Breakfast Club in a blender, you'd be in the right ballpark, though you still wouldn't quite have captured Glee'... Read more... |
Requiem for Detroit?, BBC TwoSaturday, 13 March 2010
The only time I've ever been to Detroit was in 2004, in pursuit of assorted rock stars on the Vote for Change tour. Reader, it was weird. The atmosphere in the deserted streets was deathly, as if an invading army had swarmed into town, committed... Read more... |
Cutting Edge: Too Poor for Posh School?, Channel 4Friday, 12 March 2010
OK, let’s flop it out into the open. Let’s show the cards I was dealt way back when. Those boaters you saw at the start of Cutting Edge's Too Poor for Posh School? I may well, in another lifetime, blameless aeons in the netherworld of one’s past,... Read more... |
Inside John Lewis, BBC TwoWednesday, 10 March 2010
There must have been gnashing of teeth and the rending of heavily discounted garments in the marketing departments of Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser et al, when they realised that their commercial rival had been granted a three-hour... Read more... |
A Band for Britain, BBC TwoTuesday, 09 March 2010
We know the grammar now by rote. Some local institution is on its uppers. A traditional way of life is threatened by changing times. Sic transit etcetera and so forth. What’s wanted is a shot in the arm, a kick in the seat, preferably administered... Read more... |
Women, BBC Four / Dispatches - Cameron Uncovered, C4Tuesday, 09 March 2010
You don't have to be female to wonder where the feminist revolution went. You only have to look at the not-very-private lives of footballers and the gaggles of wannabe WAGs flinging themselves in their path, or the way female pop stars seem to... Read more... |
The Lure of Las Vegas, BBC TwoSunday, 07 March 2010
“The Mob made Vegas,” says its mayor since 1999, Oscar B Goodman. And he should know, having defended plenty of mobsters in his time when - he and I are equally quick to point out - he was a defence attorney and didn’t know what they were really up... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Simon Russell BealeSaturday, 06 March 2010
The career of Simon Russell Beale (b. 1961) needs little introduction. It took wing with the Royal Shakespeare Company but, give or take the odd foray into other buildings, including work with Sam Mendes at the Donmar Warehouse and more recently... Read more... |
Five Days, BBC OneFriday, 05 March 2010
Benjamin Franklin once said that fish and guests start to smell after three days – and something similar happened to BBC One’s latest “event drama”, Five Days. The odour was that of decaying promise, and, if duty hadn’t called, I probably wouldn’t... Read more... |
Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man, BBC Three / The Man with the Golden Gavel, BBC FourThursday, 04 March 2010
Is Eddie Izzard running a lot of marathons really worth three hour-long documentaries? No, but it was worth watching this first one. Having seen close personal friends gearing up to run the London Marathon, a process involving months of training... Read more... |
