TV
Adam Sweeting
What did the Romans do for us? On the evidence of new drama Britannia, they pillaged, murdered and tortured, but also found themselves mesmerised by the psychedelic Druid magic that hovered over our ancient land like fairy dust.Creator Jez Butterworth dug into a resonant, folklorish notion of British history and identity in Jerusalem, and took something of the same idea across the Irish sea for The Ferryman. Here, in cahoots with his writer-brother Tom (who co-wrote Sky Atlantic's Tin Star), he lets himself get a bit more fanciful in his treatment of first-century history. The coast upon Read more ...
Owen Richards
The new import is the latest procedural from Scandinavia, this time focusing on Stockholm’s biker gangs. The first episode aired Tuesday night, with the rest of the series available on All4 now. In the age of the boxset binge, this availability is usually a gift - but Before We Die’s forgettable first episode might struggle to convince viewers to log on and continue.We first met killjoy cop Hanna Svensson on a drugs bust – more specifically, arresting her own son Christian for dealing at a house party. After a rather low-key confrontation, he was taken away and she was left crying in the car Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Henry VIII had a troubled marital history and Charles I lost his head, but both have also gone down in history as original, innovative and obsessive collectors of art, founders in different ways of what is now one of the world’s greatest accumulations in all media. The tale of this particular royal occupation is being brought up to date in four weekly episodes led by the enthusiastic Andrew Graham-Dixon, our go-to serial art presenter. Episode one was subtitled Dangerous Magic. And in this iteration, Graham-Dixon’s own script is loaded down with exclamatory clichés. What is it about even long Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Accepted wisdom seemed to be that in the animal world rats and cockroaches were the most adaptable and the most widely geographically distributed, followed by those pesky humans. But think again: the premise in this new three-part series is that the big cats have also done a terrific job of spreading worldwide, each a different species within the genus.Cue a ravishing film, jammed with marvellous images and fascinating information. We were treated to a terrific variety of these extraordinary predators, the top of the food chain: from the fastest to the strongest, the smallest to the biggest. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“I’m black – I need to find out how black people live.” So reasoned Kiri, sitting in the back seat of the car driven by her social services case worker. She was on the way from her prospective adopters, a white middle-class couple who already had a teenage son, to pay a first unsupervised visit to her Nigerian-born grandparents. Kiri (Felicia Mukasa, pictured below) was mature beyond her years, open-minded and well-spoken, while her case worker Miriam (Sarah Lancashire) brimmed with mumsy good cheer and sensible advice. The mood was Pollyannishly optimistic – the only dark cloud was the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fans of Luther will be familiar with writer Neil Cross’s fondness for hideous violence, shocking plot-twists and macabre humour, as well as characterful London locations, and happily they’re all present and correct in this new sci-fi thriller. Cross’s madly escalating timetable of terror goes like this: take two mismatched detectives, set them off on a murder investigation, then start the clock ticking on the annihilation of the entire planet.The shockathon commenced right from the opening sequence. For an hors d’oeuvre, we saw the spook-ish Grace Morrigan (Nikki Amuka-Bird, another Luther Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You know where you are with Kay Mellor. Somewhere in the north, among a group of people brought together by pregnancy or prison, weight or, as in the case of the recent Love, Lies and Records, work. With Girlfriends (ITV), the common denominator is encroaching age. The drama's three protagonists are all knocking on a bit and wondering if life can possibly be so resoundingly over. “I just want to feel like I used to feel,” said lollilop lady Gail. “Like I’m alive.”Anyone on the cusp of giving up the ghost will certainly have felt more alive after being introduced to the trio of women of a Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It’s not the first time that James Norton has kicked off BBC One’s New Year primetime celebrations in Russian style. Two years ago, he was costumed up as the courageous Prince Andrei, in illustrious ensemble company for Andrew Davies and Tom Harper’s War and Peace. To say that Norton’s central role in McMafia, the new eight-parter created by Hossein Amini and James Watkins (who directs the full series), comes with rather more moral ambiguity would be an understatement.If Tolstoy measured human probity in living right by God (and settling your gambling debts), the denizens of this particular “ Read more ...
theartsdesk
Young people will laugh incredulously when you tell them that once upon a time, there was only one television channel in Britain. Now we've lost count, and as even the Queen pointed out in her Christmas broadcast, many of her subjects would now be watching her (no doubt hoping for a walk-on by Meghan Markle) on phones or iPads. And comparing Her Maj with Claire Foy in The Crown, the second series of which is every bit as good as the first.In our omni-channel, multiplatform present, it has become almost impossible to keep track of everything that's happening. Consuming the output of Netflix Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We’ve seen some “interesting” series filling BBC Four’s celebrated Saturday evening slot recently, which if nothing else have prompted plenty of below-the-line discussion. Happily, we can now turn our backs on all that and hail the return of the ace Paris-based French cop show Spiral.Rather than trying to invent the most elaborately grotesque murders or equip its detectives with fashionable psychological conditions, Spiral gets all the fundamentals right. It keeps its characters real (which means far from perfect), and its criminal investigations are distinctly plausible. Its depiction of the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
To misquote Marx (Karl, not Groucho), comedy repeats itself, the first time as farce, the second time as a tragedy. The early days of broadcasting bred comedians whose work lives on in the nation’s marrow. But being Frankie Howerd or Kenneth Williams or the Steptoe actors was no laughing matter. Long after they died, the BBC started dramatising the story of the stars’ miserable lives in low-budget micro-sagas shot in dingy rooms.The best of them was Eric & Ernie, written by Peter Bowker from an idea by Victoria Wood. It told the origin story of Morecambe and Wise, who were brought Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Simon Schama called the Netherlands’ century of success an "embarrassment of riches". The thrust of Jessie Burton’s lavishly hyped debut novel The Miniaturist is that the Dutch felt guilty about their good fortune, and denied themselves the right to enjoy sugar, spice, and all things nice. The money went on surface things, on finery and furniture. The splendid look of a conflicted culture was beautifully reproduced in BBC One’s adaptation.The miniaturist of the title supplies the newly married Nella Oortman with delicately realised figurines and ornaments to decorate a cabinet-sized copy of Read more ...