TV
Markie Robson-Scott
DI John Major (Daniel Mays) has been dead a year, shot in the line of duty, though we’re far from that series in terms of tone. Now he’s back at the London Met, artificially augmented, but not very intelligently. If anything he’s a bit more shit than he was before, as one of those involved in the shooting observes.“Think of me as Oscar Pistorius,” he encourages his wife Kelly (Anna Maxwell Martin) who’s strangely reluctant to welcome the new part-AI him back home, probably because she and his partner DI Roy Carver (Stephen Graham) are in a relationship. In fact on the night he was shot, they’ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Veterans of the first series of Blood will be familiar with writer Sophie Petzal’s fondness for leading the viewer up the garden path and round the mulberry bush as the story develops. Get ready to go through it all again.The setting is the rural heart of Ireland, and this sequel resumes the year after the tragic events of its predecessor, as disgraced doctor Jim Hogan (Adrian Dunbar, pictured below) returns to pick up the pieces with his family. It was the death of Jim’s wife Mary that fuelled the drama of the first series, with the truth about Jim’s complicity or guilt kept hanging Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“Paul is in Japan to eat,” announced Rebecca Front’s smart-alecky voice-over, introducing this new series for Channel 4, but he was also there to do that very British thing of wallowing in blissful ignorance of foreign customs and traditions. A Very British Travelogue, in fact.Hollywood undertook his Big Continental Road Trip and has made cooking shows in the USA, but this was his first trip to Japan, a country about which he seemed to have made a point of knowing nothing. Perhaps he hasn’t had time to catch up on Giri/Haji, but it isn’t as if Britain is devoid of sushi bars and tempura Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Portmeirion, the Italianate village created by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis on the River Dwyryd estuary, might have been designed to provide the perfect surreal setting for the 1967 TV series The Prisoner. But though it resembles an opium dream of doll’s houses and fairytale landscapes, Portmeirion has proved remarkably sturdy, and with its selection of hotels and self-catering cottages functions successfully as a holiday destination.This new series will chart a year in the village’s life, and this opening episode was like following the local postman round the houses, and being Read more ...
Normal People, BBC One review – adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel evokes the deep cut of first love
Joseph Walsh
Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, was a psychologically rich, emotive journey into the psyches of two Irish teenagers who fall in love. Only two years on from publication, it has been turned into a 12-part series from the BBC and Hulu. Rooney’s plot was simple. Working-class boy Connell, who’s popular at school, catches the eye of the socially awkward rich girl Marianne, and we follow their on-off relationship from upper-sixth to university. The novel had its detractors, but for most readers the way Rooney elegantly rendered the inner lives of Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The national treasure that is Grayson Perry, CBE, RA, is hosting a six-episode national art club on Channel 4 for professional artists, amateur artists and the public. Since Perry came to national attention when he won the Turner Prize he has been happily ubiquitous. He may well be the country’s most effective proponent of the visual arts, as well as its most famous transvestite.Perry has written many books, delivered the Reith Lectures, curated exhibitions including the British Museum’s ground-breaking Tomb of the Unknown Craftsmen, was a bold curatorial innovator for the RA summer Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Between 1972-1992 five series of Van der Valk were made for ITV, starring Barry Foster as the eponymous Amsterdam detective. Nearly 30 years later comes this reincarnation with Marc Warren in the title role, no doubt hoping to find a regular home in the juicy two-hour Sunday night slot.Does it work? Well… up to a point, though there’s still that air of artificiality that’s hard to overcome when you set a basically British cop show in a foreign city. Check Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander for further evidence. The recruitment of a sizeable squad of Dutch actors eases this somewhat (they may be Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
In the time since the show’s inception four years ago, arguments have raged as to whether Westworld is a dud or a cult classic. For every dedicated fan, there’s someone out there crying, "The Matrix did it first!" and complaining that the plot didn’t make sense (it did). Whichever side of the argument you fall, the question loomed as to where the show’s creators, Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, could possibly take it next. Two years on from when we last entered Westworld (Sky Atlantic), we can finally find out. The violent delights at the end of Season 2 saw the "hosts" rising up against Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's interesting to note that this Netflix series – the second of Ricky Gervais's study of bereavement, which he writes, directs and stars in – is broadcast during lockdown. We've quickly become used to a different pace of life – slower, less rooted in strict timeframes of work or family routines – so we should, in theory, be able to ease ourselves into the slowness. But there's slow, and there's “nothing much happening here, mate”.The first season of After Life, in which Gervais plays Tony, a journalist on a free local newspaper in the fictional town of Tambury, who lost his wife, Lisa ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You might consider equipping yourself with a shotgun and kevlar body armour before you start watching Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic), because this is a bruising, hair-raising ride. Created by Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, it began with the televisual equivalent of being thrown from a fast-moving vehicle, as we saw a terrified man dangling on a rope over the edge of a high-rise building. His captor then doused him in petrol and set fire to him, his blazing body eventually plummeting to the pavement far below.Deliberately or not, the effect of this double-length opener was like being engulfed Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Amazon had already been declared the world’s most valuable public company before COVID-19 struck, but under the current stay-indoors regime, its online retailing and streaming entertainment services have been given an astronomical extra boost. The now-ubiquitous Amazon Prime delivery boxes would probably stretch to the moon and back if laid end to end.In the USA, surveys have shown Amazon to be more trusted than the government, the police and even Tom Hanks, but is it all too good to be true? In this Supershoppers special (Channel 4), presenters Helen Skelton and Sabrina Grant set out to find Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The “relocation in search of a new life” theme has become a dependable TV staple, from A New Life in the Sun to Relocation, Relocation and Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild, but this Channel 5 series by Kate Humble has been more entertaining than most. Perhaps it’s because we captive, locked-down TV viewers are yearning to roam free in wide-open spaces.Anyway, having moved from Chiswick to the Wye Valley, Humble (an expert on sustainable bee-keeping) knows all about swapping commuting and urban sprawl for the rural life. This third episode (out of six) was a hoot.Humble’s protagonists were Read more ...