TV
Tom Birchenough
The sheer ambition of the BBC’s new Civilisations is becoming apparent. This second episode, with Mary Beard grasping the presenter baton from Simon Schama, was subtitled “How Do We Look?” and themed around representation of the human image. It moved from the massive memorials of Mexico’s Olmec culture, via some equally sizeable relics in Ancient Egypt, to changing manners of sculptural portraiture in 5th century BCE Athens. After a side-track to China’s terracotta warriors, we were immersed in 18th century European attitudes to classical art, that were themselves reappraised by Beard in a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In a revelatory interview for the Royal Court’s playwright’s podcast series, David Hare admits to a thin skin. In his adversarial worldview, to take issue with him is – his word – to denounce him. He’s quite a denouncer himself, of course. In Collateral (BBC Two), the denunciations were directed at something rotten in the state of, in no particular order, the Church of England, the Labour Party, the British Army, the Fourth Estate, the security services, the body politic, the establishment, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. Somewhere in there there was also a police procedural. This has been a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
By most measures, minimalism is the most successful movement in 20th-century music, certainly orchestral music. The story of its inexorable spread from a tiny offshoot of the 1950s experimentation of John Cage, which was defined and promoted by two maverick visionaries, LaMonte Young and Terry Riley, then launched on a big stage by Steve Reich and Philip Glass, is a resounding vindication of the power a good idea has to defeat received wisdom. So widespread now is the influence of minimalism, with many a MOR-ish piano ensemble aspiring to an inoffensively contemporary wash of sound using Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Lord Clark – “of Civilisation”, as he was nicknamed, not necessarily affectionately – presented the 13 episodes of the eponymous series commissioned by David Attenborough for BBC Two in 1969; it was subtitled “A Personal View”, and encompassed only Western Europe (from which even Spain was excluded). The whole guide, narrated in that upper-class accent, wrapped in bespoke suiting and accompanied by full-scale orchestral throbbing, was the kind of documentary that families stayed home to watch. It proved, said those rightly enthralled by that authoritative patrician presence, that the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Workrate of the Week award goes to Lennie James, who not only stars in this new six-part drama but wrote and executive-produced it as well. James (who starred in the first series of Line of Duty, and has hit it big in The Walking Dead) plays the central character Nelly Rowe, a wily chancer living on a Deptford council estate who suddenly finds his chequered past catching up with him.We soon learn that a little of Nelly can go a long way, not least his slightly laboured geezer-slang – “things are gonna get a touch fuckin’ chronic”, “I dunno why you’re getting all secret squirrel about it” etc Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Marcella’s writer Hans Rosenfeldt was the creator of Scandi classic TV drama The Bridge, the one that made detectives with emotional disorders the flavour du jour, but you do have to wonder what kind of police force would continue to employ DS Marcella Backland (Anna Friel). On a good day she’s merely rude, argumentative, whiny and confrontational. But on a bad day she goes batshit-crazy and starts assaulting people, such as her about-to-be-ex husband’s about-to-be-wife, then looks all panicky and claims she can’t remember what happened.Despite having a long-term history of these blackouts, Read more ...
Saskia Baron
While this well-crafted documentary chose to open with footage of the stars and glitz of the American awards ceremonies, the focus of Working with Weinstein (Channel 4) was almost entirely on Harvey Weinstein’s involvement over more than 30 years in British cinema. Instead of rehashing the allegations made by Hollywood actresses, it dug deep into the distress the producer inflicted on the young British women who came to work for him.They dreamt of a career in the UK film industry, only to find themselves sexually assaulted, shamed and driven out of the business by abuse and blackmail. Laura Read more ...
Jasper Rees
This week brings a tale of two comedies. Both half-hour sitcoms are about widowed mothers with grown-up sons still at home. Each woman has an unattached admirer. Both shows star fine comic actresses who learned much of their craft in the films of Mike Leigh. And the new series started two days apart. On BBC One was Hold the Sunset. Back for a second series on BBC Two was Mum.I greeted the arrival of the former with a review to which John Cleese, who stars as the admirer of Alison Steadman, took great exception on Twitter. Humour is of course subjective. But commenters under theartsdesk’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You need to be of a certain vintage to have any memory of the traditional suburban family sitcom. Like the Raleigh Chopper and the Betamax video, like amateur athletics and glamrock and key parties, it is an extinct cultural artefact. What did for it? The internet, mainly, and the kids not watching scheduled telly any more, and maybe the rise of stand-up. After one episode of Hold the Sunset (BBC One), the suburban family sitcom is still dead. It’s as dead as a well-known parrot whose demise was pronounced by John Cleese. Mystifyingly, Cleese has chosen this moment to return to sitcom for the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The plan to bring drama back to Saturday nights on BBC One enjoyed mixed success with Hard Sun, but now threatens to slide over a cliff with this trip back to the Homeric era. In the era of Game of Thrones and now Britannia, you can see why somebody fancied having a go at the swords-sandals-and-sorcery of the Trojan War. The question is, how?A dash of instant lustre has been added in the shape of screenwriter David Farr, who also wrote the much-admired adaptation of The Night Manager. However, early enthusiasm is liable to fade in the face of the beige-ish characterisations and mundane Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When you’re hot, you’re hot. In the past two years Mike Bartlett has had the following works staged or broadcast: Wild, a play about Edward Snowden at Hampstead Theatre; Albion, a three-hour neo-Chekhovian state-of-the-nation play at the Almeida; an episode of Doctor Who, a TV version of his play King Charles III, 10 hours of Doctor Foster, and now the hospital drama Trauma on ITV. Of the last three he was also executive producer, as he is of Press, a six-hour BBC One drama he’s been writing about the newspaper industry.It’s an astonishing rate of productivity, to compare with the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It says something about the state of television that sooner or later every actor has to play a cop or a spy. Latest in line is Carey Mulligan, starring as DI Kip Glaspie in David Hare’s new four-parter Collateral.This is, on the face of it, a thriller. The wheels of detection spun into action after the puzzling death of Abdullah Asif, a pizza delivery man who’d just delivered a quattro formaggi to harassed mother of two, Karen Mars (Billie Piper). Karen indignantly pointed out that the pizza in question lacked its requested additional topping, though this did not prove to be the motive for Read more ...