TV
Tom Birchenough
Much has been made of this adaptation of The Woman in White having an especial relevance for our times. Its concern with the power dynamics of gender relations was certainly hammered home right from the beginning, as Jessie Buckley uttered its loaded opening question, “How is it men crush women time and time again and go unpunished?”, effectively delivered to us, the audience, to boot. But despite such references being periodically dropped into the dialogue – and that opening sentence certainly didn’t come from the Wilkie Collins novel, either – as its five episodes developed, Fiona Seres’s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In a manner uncannily reminiscent of last year’s Season 6, this latest edition of Homeland spent at least half the series trying to get warmed up for the dash to the tape over the final furlongs. Viewers finding themselves slipping into a catatonic stupor when confronted with yet more bombastic rantings from the crushingly dull ultra-right broadcaster Brett O’Keefe (Jake Weber), or those uninspired by the personality vacuum that was FBI agent Dante Allen (Morgan Spector), probably left this series for dead weeks ago.But from episode six, as the shape of the Russian conspiracy to sabotage the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
If you came to this programme knowing nothing about the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, you may have learned a few things. That he died, tragically and rather dramatically, of a massive heart attack during a first night performance of one his own ballets. That he was "interested" in sex and death, and frequently choreographed violent forms of both in his ballets. That in later life he had a wife and daughter whom he loved. And that he was quite a significant 20th-century choreographer – though this last you'll have picked up more from the fact that this programme was aired at prime culture Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Goodmans are back - for a fifth (and rumoured possibly to be the last) series of Friday Night Dinner, Robert Popper’s deliciously daft comedy set in a secular Jewish household in north London and based on the Peep Show producer's own upbringing.Adult sons Adam (Simon Bird) and Jonny (Tom Rosenthal) instantly revert to their childhood selves when they return home to parents Martin and Jackie each week for a family supper. Martin (Paul Ritter) likes to stroll around shirtless while Jackie (Tamsin Greig) is obsessed with MasterChef and indulges her sons’ unremitting sparring and pranking. Read more ...
Matthew Wright
As the ice hardened in the Cold War of the mid-1950s, and the USSR mocked the USA for both its supposed barbarism and racial segregation, the representative from Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, had a bright idea. Instead of competing in the cultural heats of the Cold War on Soviet strengths of classical music and ballet, why not bring the world that quintessentially, originally American art form, jazz? With the added benefit that most jazz ensembles were racially mixed, to dispel the Soviet claims about segregation.Powell’s wife, Hazel Scott, was a jazz singer, and he was close friends with Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This was not a film that left you with much respect for the wisdom of politicians, but perhaps its truest line came from John Kerry, when he called the ongoing – seven years, and counting – Syrian conflict “an insult to the humanity of this planet”. Lyse Doucet has covered it as a reporter for the BBC since its beginning back in March 2011, and Michael Rudin's two-part (the second comes tonight) documentary Syria: The World’s War saw her revisiting some of its darkest moments, sometimes recapping how she had reported them at the time. That was combined with the perspective of today, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Aerosmith’s guitarist Joe Perry put it, “there’s a certain amount of fuck you-ness in everything Jeff does.” Perhaps it’s this which has allowed Jeff Beck to achieve the rare feat of surviving into his seventies as what you might describe as a guitar legend without portfolio. He does what he wants when he wants to, is revered by the great and good of the electric guitar universe, and has avoided being trapped into playing The Yardbirds’ greatest hits until the end of time.He isn’t known as an eager interviewee, but the Beck on show here seemed relaxed and vaguely amused to be taking a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A few years ago Abi Morgan was everywhere. For the cinema she scripted Shame, The Iron Lady, The Invisible Woman and Suffragette. On television she adapted Birdsong and created The Hour and, most recently, River. But she’s mainly been quiet for a couple of years. Her silence is broken, loudly, by The Split (BBC One).The setting is a pair of London law firms specialising in divorce. Defoe’s, presumably named in honour of the much married Moll Flanders, is a boutique family outfit occupying a stuffy old-school set of chambers controlled ruthlessly by Ruth (Deborah Findlay, pictured below). Her Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Some critics complain that Westworld is too complicated for its own good, and you can see their point. Even on a basic level, it’s an exploration of the nature and potential of artificial intelligence, as it depicts the consequences of super-lifelike androids – or “synthetic humans”, if you will – acquiring higher knowledge and going on a terrifying killing rampage.You can dial down your apparatus criticus and just watch it as a lurid, menacing shoot-’em-up show, with spectacular scenery and scenes which (cunningly) would probably be too gruesome if they were about real people rather Read more ...
Katherine Waters
The BBC excels at a very particular kind of drama, namely one where production values overawe dramatic content. Its version of The Woman in White (BBC One) proves no exception. Our hero is Walter, a bemused sappy painter played by ex-Eastender Ben Hardy. Not much recommends his character except his ornately Italian friend Pesca who sets up an apparently cushy job for him in the rural retreat of Limmeridge (“When you make it to the top, remember you friend Pesca at the bottom!” he exclaims, only partly in jest). The role consists of restoring some ageing prints while tutoring the daughters of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Home From Home, written by newcomers Chris Fewtrell and Simon Crowther, first saw life as a pilot in the BBC’s Landmark Sitcom Season in 2016, the channel's search for new and original content for its schedules. Well, new it may be, but original it ain’t – yet don’t let that put you off. It’s a decent enough run-through of several sitcom tropes, with Johnny Vegas as its everyman hero.The set-up is that underachiever but hard-working northerner Neil Hackett (Vegas), the manager of a newsagent at a motorway services (“northbound and southbound”), has scrimped and saved with wife Fiona (Niky Read more ...
Owen Richards
As if the real world wasn’t scary enough... Ghost stories are en vogue at the moment, and after the BBC’s hit-and-miss Requiem, Channel 4 brings True Horror to the small screen – a collection of "real" ghost stories, told by witness interviews and dramatised with a decent budget. And just like Requiem, our first tale took us to the rolling hills of Wales.Wales, according to the wide-eyed Pastor Matt Tricker, is a land of old gods and occultists – a description which doesn’t match my Cardiff suburban upbringing, but who knows what happened behind closed doors? The Rich family certainly could Read more ...