TV
Markie Robson-Scott
The BBC’s version of Love Island has familiar ingredients: ten 20-somethings, many with pale manicures and hair extensions, on an island, in this case Mykanos. It’s not to everyone’s taste. “All I see is water, I don’t see no nail shops,” observes Melissa, whose argumentativeness causes her to fall out with people and who wants to improve her friendship skills.The concept that they’re united by heartbreak – they’re not – is a shaky one, which weakens the programme’s impact. There are too many variables, not enough clarity about goals. Are they mainly just here for a nice Greek island break? Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Animal behaviourist Jo-Rosie Haffenden, who lives in Spain, has some very good dogs (and a charming toddler, who knows how to sit). Can she transfer her training skills to three-year-old Graydon in Bristol, who has six tantrums a day, and 14-month-old Dulcie in Croydon, who has never gone to sleep in her cot? “Kids are more like dogs than people think,” she says in Train Your Baby Like a Dog, a new parenting programme called “dehumanising” in a Change.org petition asking the network to cancel the show, signed by nearly 25,000 people this week.But Haffenden’s approach, apart from the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It was a lovely summer’s day in southern England, much as it was in County Sligo. I was with my parents, driving to visit a very elderly relative. We arrived not long after the news of Lord Mountbatten’s death was announced and my great aunt was distraught, more over the death of someone she saw as a war hero than over the general carnage, I suspect. I don’t recall if my parents saw his death as a particular tragedy – “The Troubles” were a decade old that day in August 1979 and everyone hated the IRA for the destruction of so many lives, many on mainland Britain. When I went to interview Read more ...
Owen Richards
What’s the next level above national treasure? We’ll need a name for it by the end of All Woman, Kathy Burke’s new Channel 4 documentary. With a big heart and a foul mouth, she’s travelled the country trying to define 21st century womanhood – an incredibly tall order for three hour-long shows, but episode one proved she’s more than up for the task.The first concept under Burke’s watchful eye was beauty, and where better to start than former Love Island contestant Megan Barton-Hanson? The two shared a sympathetic conversation about the pressures young girls face to conform to beauty standards Read more ...
Owen Richards
Life on the Welsh coast isn’t getting any easier: defendant Madlen was found guilty of murder, husband Evan was coming home from prison, and Faith had just given Steve Baldini a rather uncomfortable snog on the beach. She’s probably pining for that first series now, at least the hubby was out of the picture.In the latest episode of BBC's watercooler hit, Faith’s become entangled in a murder enquiry of her own. After running errands for local baddie Gael Reardon, one of her contacts has turned up on a morgue slab. The victim had called Faith just before his death, so it won’t be long until the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Get those worksheets in by Monday or I will Brexit the lot of you,” says turbo-charged teacher Aine (Aisling Bea: The Fall, Gap Year) to her London TEFL class. Her students have just enjoyed a stimulating lesson built around the Kardashian family tree. “Kim is the…” Aine waits for the answer. “Yes, well done, the second eldest. And Khloé is the…yes, the middle one. She was the youngest until along came Kendall and Kylie.”Aisling Bea’s lovable new six-part comedy drama, co-starring Sharon Horgan as Aine’s older sister Shona (the two have worked together before, but this is the first script of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the final instalment of Dominic Savage’s trilogy of stand-alone dramas for Channel 4, Gemma Chan took the title role of a single woman in her mid-thirties, struggling with awkward choices about motherhood, relationships and settling down. Her mother, despairing of ever having grandchildren, was urging Hannah to “make a plan and stick to it.”That’s all very well, but how? Hannah experimented with online dating, but she felt like a fish out of water and it only confirmed her worst fears. One guy made it plain that he only wanted one thing, and he had no time for Hannah’s ditherings. “I don’t Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Being a teenager used to be fun, allegedly, but for the young cast of HBO’s controversial new hit series Euphoria it looks more like a nightmare ride through a theme park of bad trips. Filmed in various Los Angeles locations, Euphoria (showing on Sky Atlantic) follows the interconnected stories of a group of teens battling with issues including drugs, sex, gender and family breakdown.Anyone expecting lightweight escapism should look away now. Euphoria pulls no punches in its depiction of drug abuse, and its graphic, brutal sex sequences (episode one even shows an erect penis) have already Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
A sad story of lonely men, Simon Rawles's atmospheric and beautifully shot documentary has no narration, apart from the occasional faint, off-camera question from the interviewer. This makes everything more depressing. We’re alone on a nightmare ride, starting with Catfishman. “I catfish females. I’m a legend in the community, a hero.” He is living somewhere snowy and motionless in north America, we’re not told where, and spends his days constructing fake online profiles, targeting women. His mindset is grim. “I pose as a male model, good-looking and attractive, and I set up dates. I reel Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
While a spot of home cooking can be a relaxing experience with a nice meal at the end of it, signing up to this culinary campaign with Michelin-starred mega-chef Jason Atherton is like being sent off to join the Foreign Legion. The plan is that Atherton and his trusted advisers Dale and Andy pick a squad of young, untried chefs from around Britain, then take them to top restaurants across Europe to see if they can beat the locals at their own recipes.They began in Puglia, southern Italy, at a restaurant called Osteria Origano, where they were greeted by the cheerful proprietor Alfredo and his Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s been nearly a decade since the sixth and final series of Lost, JJ Abrams’s baffling odyssey of time-travelling air crash survivors, but judging by Manifest, its influence still hovers over TV-land. Produced by (among others) film director Robert Zemeckis, Manifest is another mystical thriller that might make you think twice about boarding that holiday flight.This first episode began with vacationers gathering at the airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica for their flight home to New York. We zoomed in on the Stone family, comprising Ben, his wife Grace and two children, his sister Michaela and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This episode of the celebrity genealogy show began with footage of Naomie Harris at Ian Fleming's former home in Jamaica, where she was helping launch Bond 25 (to be released next year), in which she is playing Moneypenny for the third time. It was a fitting location, as Harris’s folks hail from the Caribbean; her mother was born in Jamaica and her father's family are from Trinidad via Grenada.But, unusually for a subject of this consistently engaging show, Harris told us she was never interested in her origins. It was a strange admission – what really, no interest at all? – but one that a Read more ...