BBC Two
Alma's Not Normal, BBC Two review - bare-knuckle comedy pilot hits the spotThursday, 09 April 2020
Creating the opening episode of a new comedy series is like flipping pancakes with one hand while playing the Moonlight Sonata with the other. You have to introduce your characters and invent the world they live in, while squeezing in enough plot to... Read more... |
Our Girl, Series 5, BBC One review - where soap and warfare collideWednesday, 25 March 2020
Some things never change in Our Girl. At the beginning of 2018’s Series 4, military heroine Georgie Lane (Michelle Keegan) had been traumatised by the death of her fiance Elvis Harte, killed in Afghanistan at the end of Series 3. At the start of... Read more... |
Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story, BBC Two review - disruptive political maverick eludes pigeonholingThursday, 19 March 2020
This patchwork of interviews and comments from male journalists and politicians interspersed with clips from television news and films, from The Godfather to The Avengers, was a zig-zag narrative of Dominic Cummings’s unique career as a political... Read more... |
Back in Time for the Corner Shop, BBC Two review - open all hours with the Ardern familyWednesday, 26 February 2020
Since Back in Time for Dinner in 2015, this BBC Two social history strand in which families travel into a recreated past to experience ways in which society, leisure and lifestyles have changed has proved a robust perennial. Its latest iteration,... Read more... |
Confronting Holocaust Denial with David Baddiel, BBC Two review - grappling with the incomprehensibleTuesday, 18 February 2020
It’s all in the timing. Here was David Baddiel beginning a stand-up turn at a gig in Finchley. A Holocaust survivor gets to heaven, and God asks for a Holocaust joke. God says that his joke isn't funny, and the survivor replies “Well, I guess you... Read more... |
Secrets of the Museum, BBC Two review - the incredible hidden worlds of the V&AFriday, 07 February 2020
The nation’s public attics – museums – hold a huge jumble of objects collected and used in all sorts of ways to tell us stories of past and present. In this BBC Two film, we went behind the visible face of the Victoria and Albert, with its holdings... Read more... |
Chris Packham: 7.7 Billion People and Counting, BBC Two review - is it too late to get population growth under control?Wednesday, 22 January 2020
We hear plenty of debate about climate change and its disastrous potential, but the ballooning growth of the world’s population may be the most critical issue facing humankind. Chris Packham thinks so (“it’s undeniably the elephant in the room,” he... Read more... |
Cornwall: This Fishing Life, BBC Two review - a precarious trade on the ocean waveWednesday, 08 January 2020
Series about fishing have become a durable mini-genre, including the likes of Deadliest Catch and Saltwater Heroes. However, this new six-parter on BBC Two brings us much closer to home than Alaska or Tasmania, and probes into the lives of the... Read more... |
Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?Tuesday, 24 December 2019
This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father... Read more... |
Heston's Marvellous Menu: Back to the Noughties, BBC Two review - ghost of food trends pastFriday, 20 December 2019
Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu. Tonight’s BBC Two programme had a rather theatrical premise: a chef recreating the complete dining... Read more... |
The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, BBC Two review - rehashed political history fails to set pulses racingWednesday, 18 December 2019
All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think? Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, is a dogged reporter who rarely seems to sleep, and here we watched as she... Read more... |
Giri/Haji, Series Finale, BBC Two review - a thriller, but much more besidesFriday, 06 December 2019
Happily, Joe Barton’s tinglingly original thriller (BBC Two) finished as smartly as it began, not by any humdrum tying-up of loose ends but by giving free rein to the story’s ambiguities and impossible choices. If indeed they really were choices.... Read more... |
