TV
Adam Sweeting
Perhaps inspired by the success of the revived Hawaii Five-O, CBS and Universal have gone back to the Eighties, and back to Hawaii, to see if the venerable Magnum P.I. could benefit from a similar overhaul. Early evidence suggests that as formulaic American dramas go, it’s… sort of business as usual.Tom Selleck, in Hawaiian shirt, tight jeans and a moustache crying out for a Flymo lawnmower, was the original freelance investigator, Thomas Magnum. The new guy is Jay Hernandez, last seen on the big screen in Suicide Squad and here looking very relaxed tooling around Hawaii’s mountain roads and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
How much more is there to say about the thrills and spills of midlife? Cold Feet made a surprisingly nimble return to ITV a couple of series ago after a long furlough. There was little evidence of stiff joints or saggy bottoms in Mike Bullen’s writing as he welcomed a gang of teens to the cast list. A second series of Cold Feet 2.0 wore the slightly botoxed rictus of a drama that was running out of new expressions and at that point it would have been no dishonour to call it a day.But no, ratings suggest there’s still a national appetite for this friendship group. The key to tolerating Cold Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
On Drums was inhabited by a parade of fine-looking young and middle aged multi-ethnic anglophone drummers, all introduced by Stewart Copeland, the American drummer of the Police. In vintage film and contemporary interviews his chosen musicians seemed almost invariably fit and trim whatever the substances ingested in the past. Presumably touring schedules and the sheer physical effort (only temporarily supplanted, it turns out, by Roger Linn’s 1980s invention of drum machines) of banging the instruments kept our musicians in good nick.Copeland suggested that percussionists, sitting behind Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Some may have thought that Catastrophe (Channel 4) had neared the end of the road with the third series, but I disagree. It was still managing, with some deftness, to pull off the difficult trick of mixing broad humour with serious themes of love, attraction and the difficulties of parenthood. So it's sad news for fans that the sitcom's fourth series is to be the last – although there have been hints that a film may some day hit our screens.Catastrophe started with a beautifully simple premise: Sharon, an Irish teacher living in London (Sharon Horgan), meets American businessman Rob (Rob Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Read theartsdesk review of Call My Agent!, Series 4Apparently it took some time before the cream of the French acting profession could be persuaded to take part in a TV drama that shed a sardonic light on the relationship between actors and their agents – or maybe it was their agents who harboured reservations – but once the ball started rolling there was no stopping them. Some of the guest stars in Call My Agent won’t be too familiar to non-French viewers, but in the first two series we saw Nathalie Baye and her daughter Laura Smet, Audrey Fleurot (of Spiral fame), Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One day this all will be over. Give it half a century. In 50 years' time, there will be documentaries in which today’s young, by then old, will explain to generations yet unborn exactly how and why Britain went round the twist in 2016. Much as we now watch re-runs of Cathy Come Home, there will also be screenings of Brexit: The Uncivil War (Channel 4) and Sir James Graham, probably still looking like a freshly scrubbed teenager, will give interviews about how he finessed into 90 minutes the story of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.But that is to come. Here we are now, freshly Read more ...
Saskia Baron
“Can you breathe?’ “Yeah.” “Shame, that”. Another ne’er-do-well is being banged to rights after a chase through container stacks in the dark. Luther is back, and he hasn’t upgraded his Volvo or changed his tweed coat – but we don’t really mind, do we? It’s a bit like Columbo, Miss Marple or Christmas dinner, the familiar ingredients are what we crave. Before the title sequence rolls, two distinct storylines have been set up and we’ll doubtless spend the four episodes working out how they intertwine (or not); but mostly, we’re waiting for Ruth Wilson to appear.There’s a perverted serial killer Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The facts of Escape at Dannemora (Sky Atlantic) are notorious in America. Convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Indeed a less enquiring version of the story might have been called Escape from Dannemora. But the preposition is key. This is about what happened inside the prison: the two escapees' grooming of their female supervisor Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell (Patricia Arquette, pictured below).That this was her story as much as theirs was established in the opening scene. It was shot from behind Mitchell with the lens Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There’s no singing, no Hugh Jackman and no Anne Hathaway, and the dolorous tone of Andrew Davies’s new adaptation of Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel is established in the opening scene. It’s the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo in 1815, and the ruffianly Thénardier (Adeel Akhtar) is picking his way through the carpet of bloodied corpses covering the battlefield, rifling their pockets for valuables. To his consternation, one of his victims, Colonel Pontmercy, is still alive. But more about him in future episodes.Most of the limelight in episode one belonged to Jean Valjean, as he struggled Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bruce Springsteen once sang about there being "57 channels and nothin' on". Those were the days. Now we have so much to watch (including Netflix's Springsteen on Broadway) that all the world's remaining elephants couldn't remember them all.But stress not. Theartsdesk's critics have bent themselve to the herculean task of sifting the annals of 2018 to find the most nutritious nuggets and the most noxious no-hopers. Among these, you may even find the odd specimen of that supposedly defunct species, the "appointment to view" programme. Oddly, despite what the media gurus like to tell us, viewers Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sarah Phelps’s annual reboot of a canonical murder mystery by Agatha Christie has rapidly established itself as a Christmas staple of TV drama. And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence (which was postponed to Easter) are now followed by The ABC Murders (BBC One), which feels like the biggest creative challenge Phelps has yet faced in her rebranding project. Previously she has skirted clear of Christie’s iconic detectives but could not dodge them indefinitely. Here she has taken on the task of stripping the fussy layers of gloss off the overpainted Read more ...
Veronica Lee
After the heart-breaking ending to the third series earlier this year, which covered the death of William Shakespeare's young son, Hamnet, it was back to the comedy for this seasonal special. But there was no jarring handbrake turn for writer Ben Elton who, like his hero the Bard, has form in melding tragedy and comedy to great effect. Rather he used that storyline to make a narratively sound segue from loss to laughter; in A Crow Christmas Carol the Shakespeares, feeling unable to celebrate the season at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon, decide to spend the holiday at Will's lodgings Read more ...