BBC Two
Money: Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? BBC TwoWednesday, 30 November 2011
It’s not long until we’re told, “There is enough money in the world to make everyone in the world a millionaire.” And if everyone was? Utopia and freedom might not be inevitable. Inexorable price rises would restore some sort of balance. Or a crash... Read more... |
Ian Hislop: When Bankers Were Good, BBC TwoWednesday, 23 November 2011
There were those who laughed and those who spat outrage when Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of Goldman Sachs, said in a press interview that he was simply “doing God’s work”. Although Blankfein did have the insight to add that if he slit his wrists... Read more... |
Pan Am, BBC TwoThursday, 17 November 2011
This is a very odd series. Even the BBC seem to be wondering what on earth they're supposed to be doing with it, since after the Wednesday night airing of these first two episodes Pan Am is moving to Saturday evening, with a Thursday repeat. ... Read more... |
Art for Heroes: A Culture Show Special, BBC TwoSaturday, 12 November 2011
Coming as it did over this Armistice weekend, when the soldiers who have died for us are foremost in our thoughts, last night's Art for Heroes: A Culture Show Special was a salutary reminder that soldier-victims are not just those who are killed or... Read more... |
Life's Too Short/ Rev, BBC TwoFriday, 11 November 2011
Those of us who regarded The Office as a work of comic genius (not a word I use lightly) will, I'm afraid, take some convincing about Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais's latest offering. Keen fans who have followed the duo's every move since that... Read more... |
Tubular Bells, The Charles Hazlewood All Stars, St George's BristolSunday, 06 November 2011
Tubular Bells, the first half of which is being currently revived as a live piece in the UK, sold between 15 and 17 million units worldwide. Quite apart from the work’s innocence being co-opted and made spooky in William Friedkin's The Exorcist,... Read more... |
Louis Theroux: America's Most Dangerous Pets, BBC Two/ Misfits, Series 3, E4Monday, 31 October 2011
He’s been in the presence of murderers, rapists and paedophiles. He’s auditioned naked for a porn movie and submitted his tender midriff to liposuction. He’s spent more time than can be good for anyone in the company of Mr and Mrs Christina Hamilton... Read more... |
This World: Spain's Stolen Babies, BBC TwoWednesday, 19 October 2011
The scale of the operation was hard to take in, as was the extent of the cover-up. Between 1940 and 1990, it’s estimated that up to 30,000 babies were trafficked in Spain. It started under the military dictatorship of Franco, but it ended long after... Read more... |
Origins of Us: Bones, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 October 2011
I was possibly not the right person to review this programme. I didn't do biology beyond GCSE, can't bear David Attenborough's Natural World programmes and laugh anytime someone says "homo erectus". Nevertheless, Alice Roberts, an anatomist and a... Read more... |
Shirley, BBC TwoFriday, 30 September 2011
A couple of series ago Alan Yentob took himself off to Monte Carlo to grill Dame Shirley Bassey for Imagine about her life in showbiz. Kissinger got more out of Gromyko at the height of the Cold War. (The Soviet foreign minister’s nickname was Nyet... Read more... |
The Great British Bake Off, BBC TwoWednesday, 21 September 2011
Baking and competition are two of my favourite things, thus when BBC Two unveiled The Great British Bake Off last year, it seemed my gluttonous, pugnacious prayers had been fulfilled. Amateurs had every possible skill challenged by the good-cop... Read more... |
QI, BBC TwoSaturday, 10 September 2011
A couple of summers back, I spent an entire term with an idling history teacher who watched, in his many, many free periods, the entire back catalogue of QI on his laptop. And gave us running updates. Much as we mocked him for his pseudo-... Read more... |
