TV
Broken, BBC One series finale review - Seán Bean's quiet immensityWednesday, 05 July 2017
The Catholic Church hasn’t enjoyed a good press on screen lately. Nuns punished Irishwomen for their pregnancies in Philomena. Priests interfered with altar boys in Spotlight. And in The Young Pope a Vatican fixated on conservatism and casuistry... Read more... |
50 Shades of Gay, Channel 4 review - no better place in the world to be gay?Tuesday, 04 July 2017
It’s half a century since homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales, so who better to cast his gaze over the lie of the land than stately homo Rupert Everett? The accomplished actor (and even finer diarist) started as he meant... Read more... |
Melvyn Bragg on TV, BBC Two review – too many talking heads, too little actionSunday, 02 July 2017
Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time. Broadcasting juggernaut Lord Bragg would undertake a sweeping survey of the way that television has transformed our lives and reflected British society in the last 70-odd years, soaring over dramas... Read more... |
Sudan: The Last of the Rhinos, BBC Two review - requiem for disappearing wildlifeThursday, 29 June 2017
“The northern white rhinos are just a symbol of what we do to the natural world,” as one of the contributors to this haunting documentary put it. “We witness them disappearing in front of our eyes.” The programme ended with names of endangered... Read more... |
Who Should We Let In? Ian Hislop on the First Great Immigration Row, review – how history repeats itselfFriday, 23 June 2017
Immigration…immigration… immigration… that’s what we need! Not the words of record-breaking, tap-dancing trumpeter Roy Castle, rather it’s the gist of a Times leader from 1853 (admittedly, fairly heavily paraphrased). It was just one of the eye-... Read more... |
Chance, Universal review – Hugh Laurie is reborn as a film-noir shrinkWednesday, 21 June 2017
Hugh Laurie, in his new role of forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, tells us that he works with those who are “mutilated by life”, and we soon see that Chance himself falls into that category. He’s in the midst of a divorce, he only sees his... Read more... |
Ripper Street, BBC Two, Series 5 review – apocalypse looms in Victorian WhitechapelTuesday, 20 June 2017
There has always been an air of incipient doom hovering over Ripper Street, since the show is more of a laboratory of lost souls than a mere detective drama. Now, as it embarks on its fifth and final season, there’s every reason to suppose that the... Read more... |
Murdered For Being Different, BBC Three review - unbearable but unmissableMonday, 19 June 2017
Heaven alone knows we've pressing anxieties enough to preoccupy us, but if you have the emotional bandwidth to accommodate more, the iPlayer can oblige. Available now on BBC Three is the latest in what now becomes a trilogy of heartrending dramas... Read more... |
Riviera, Sky Atlantic review - codswallop on the Côte d'AzurFriday, 16 June 2017
W Somerset Maugham, who knew a thing or two about the dark side, summed up the Riviera as “a sunny place for shady people”. On the evidence of this first episode, Riviera is a funny place for shitty people.The first few minutes flung us... Read more... |
Fearless, ITV review - Helen McCrory lights up dense conspiracy thrillerTuesday, 13 June 2017
Emma Banville is almost too good to be true: a human rights lawyer who houses Syrian refugees, wins the most hopeless cases of wrongful conviction, won’t be bullied by anyone – coppers, prison wardens, the system. OK she smokes, presumably for the... Read more... |
The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mistMonday, 12 June 2017
There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the... Read more... |
Poldark, Series 3, BBC One review - tempestuous passions and pantomime villains ride againMonday, 12 June 2017
Is it always the same bit of Cornish clifftop they gallop along in Poldark? Anyway here it was again, raising the curtain on the third series. As the camera flew in over a gaggle of squawking seagulls spiralling above the foaming surf crashing on... Read more... |
