BBC Two
Adam Sweeting
The BBC is pleased with itself for having insinuated a documentary team inside the Bank of England, but was this august custodian of the nation’s finances really going to let slip any juicy revelations? The Bank’s role is too powerful and too political for its employees to be anything other than extremely tight-lipped. In fact a major theme of this film (the first of two parts) was the lengths the Bank goes to to protect its secrets, with a strict “purdah” regime in place to prevent leaks and electronic sweeps for listening devices a routine occurrence. It was safe to assume that director Rob Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As an aid to meditation, Professor Brian Cox’s latest series The Planets (BBC Two) could hardly be faulted. A majestic tour of the Solar System awash with computerised imagery, an eerie soundtrack and a travel budget the president of the United States might envy, it exerted a narcotic allure as Cox’s gaze roamed billions of kilometres into deep space. His whispery commentary is a bit like having a scalp massage.Mind you, you could probably glean most of the facts from assorted scientific publications or even Wikipedia, but Cox has a gift for making you feel that he’s telling the story for the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Always leave them wanting more, a wise man once said, and there can’t be a single fan of Mum who doesn’t want its creator, Stefan Golaszewski, to change his mind about making the third series the last. But then, when you achieve perfection perhaps it’s best to sign off at the top; the finale was just scrumptious.Over 18 beautifully paced episodes, Golaszewski crafted a study of familial love, bereavement and the prevailing strength of the human spirit as he told the story of the recently widowed Cathy (Lesley Melville), for whom the word stoic might have been invented.Slowly, very slowly, we Read more ...
Thatcher: A Very British Revolution, Finale, BBC Two review - a heartbreaking account of her decline
Marina Vaizey
The surprisingly touching conclusion to BBC Two’s five-part chronicle of the Thatcher years was a masterpiece of contemporary history. Congratulations to producer Alice Fraser, director Pamela Gordon, and composer Alexandra Harwood for very fitting and emotive music (for once). Perhaps it has taken a female team to produce this portrait, warts and all, without a hint of the condescension still evidenced even now by a significant number of Margaret Thatcher’s male contemporaries.Some of the best known survivors of her government delivered their highly personal views with astonishing frankness Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In the week that the Jeremy Kyle show has been yanked permanently off air after the death of one of its vulnerable guests, the timing couldn’t have been better for the BBC to show how sensitively the old-school broadcaster handles contributors with mental health problems.On Wednesday night, Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain movingly explored her daily struggle with panic attacks without being forced to expose too much detailed information about the childhood traumas which lay at the root of her anxiety disorder. The producers didn’t feel the need to track down and drag onscreen the schoolmates who Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It is a cliché that never grows old. From Fawlty Towers via The Office all the way through to (so we are told) Fleabag, a great half-hour comedy that bows out after two series cements its place in the pantheon by ensuring posterity wants more. Twelve episodes seems to be the platonic ideal of the perfectly proportioned sitcom. When Stefan Golaszewski’s Mum (BBC Two) ended last time round there was thus a case for stopping there. It finished on a moment of such exquisitely subtle optimism. Parting from Cathy (Lesley Manville) and her daft coterie would have been a sweet sorrow that made Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Bognor Regis was once renowned for its restorative climate and was much favoured by George V (he awarded the town the “Regis” tag), but times have changed if Toby Jones’s new series is anything to go by. The Bognor we see in BBC Two's Don't Forget the Driver is a crumbling ghost town, all run-down bungalows, pensioners and, it seems, an underclass of exploited immigrants. It looks like the London-luvvie invasion which has trendified other coastal towns like Hove and Broadstairs has passed dear old Bognor by. Jones, who also co-wrote the series with Tim Crouch, plays Peter Green with a Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
When they were children the interviewees in this film – the last survivors – were taken away in incomprehensible circumstances, on their way to be murdered for who they were, in Germany and places further east. A handful of the few thousands who reached the UK after 1945, now octogenarians and nonagenarians, bore witness in this incredibly painful, profoundly necessary programme.In spite of the sheen of normality as we met these elderly people in their apparently comfortable homes, it was almost unbearable to watch. What some of the survivors asked even now was what could they do with their Read more ...
Veronica Lee
After the heart-breaking ending to the third series earlier this year, which covered the death of William Shakespeare's young son, Hamnet, it was back to the comedy for this seasonal special. But there was no jarring handbrake turn for writer Ben Elton who, like his hero the Bard, has form in melding tragedy and comedy to great effect. Rather he used that storyline to make a narratively sound segue from loss to laughter; in A Crow Christmas Carol the Shakespeares, feeling unable to celebrate the season at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon, decide to spend the holiday at Will's lodgings Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In 2017, the BBC Wales team with director Rhodri Huw filmed a Christmas show in the old 1888 Coal Exchange in Cardiff, now a hotel. Tom Jones and Beverley Knight’s Gospel Christmas was an exciting and upbeat show, which ended in an electrifying “Born in Bethlehem”. Knight was jumping around as if she’d had springs fitted, the radio mic on her back somehow staying attached to her.This year, they returned to the same building and went jazz with Merry Christmas Baby - with Gregory Porter & Friends. Instead of the hwyl and the energy, this year’s Welsh seasoning, liberally applied, was Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The toughest subject you can imagine: when, and how, would you choose death over life? This riveting film examined that excruciating dilemma within the legal frameworks on offer to some of the terminally ill in the United States. Louis Theroux, narrator and interviewer, met people who wished to take control of their end, and encountered all the moral complexities of the issue along the way. It was an absolutely absorbing, and often very moving experience.Seven states in the US have legalised self-administered lethal medication (with professional safeguards), and such a law is being considered Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Peter Jackson has form when it comes to re-examining cinema history. In 1995 he made Forgotten Silver, a documentary about Colin McKenzie, a New Zealand filmmaker who not only made the first sound recordings but also invented the tracking shot and the close-up, and pioneered colour film, back in the 1910s long before his counterparts in America and France. His impressive oeuvre was lost until Jackson found the abandoned cans of film in a garden shed. In the Jackson documentary, actor Sam Neill paid tribute to McKenzie, Harvey Weinstein gushed, and film historians like Leonard Maltin Read more ...