crime
Michael Connelly: The Night Fire review - unputdownableSunday, 03 November 2019![]() Ballard and Bosch sound like some dystopian upmarket commodity. They are, but deep in with the low life. They are Michael Connolly’s new duo of detectives, one in semi-disgrace, one retired. Throw in Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, and you’ve got... Read more... |
Spiral, Series 7, BBC Four review - hard-hitting return of our favourite French cop showSunday, 20 October 2019![]() And welcome back to our favourite French cop show – perhaps our favourite cop show from anywhere, in fact – which has raced into its seventh series (on BBC Four) with some typically grimy storylines about death and lowlife in a very de-romanticised... Read more... |
Giri/Haji, BBC Two review - inspired Anglo-Japanese thriller makes compulsive viewingFriday, 18 October 2019![]() Well here’s an interesting one. We’ve been up to our eyebrows in Eurocops for the past few years, but this Anglo-Japanese fusion from BBC Two (the title translates as "Duty / Shame") feels strikingly fresh and different.It began, as policiers are... Read more... |
My Life is Murder, Alibi review - whimsical tales of detection from Down UnderWednesday, 25 September 2019![]() Lucy Lawless achieved cult status in the Nineties fantasy classic Xena: Warrior Princess, and later became a regular in such disparate creations as Battlestar Galactica and Parks and Recreation. In My Life is Murder, she joins the ever-expanding... Read more... |
The $50m Art Swindle, BBC Two review - ramblin' gamblin' man comes home to roostTuesday, 24 September 2019![]() “It’s nice to make money – lots of money,” said Michel Cohen, former high-flying New York art dealer turned debtor, jailbird and fugitive. He made oodles of the stuff and then lost it all, leaving a string of wealthy art collectors and galleries to... Read more... |
City on a Hill, Sky Atlantic review - power, corruption and larceny in 1990s BostonThursday, 19 September 2019![]() Connoisseurs of gnarly Boston-based crime sagas like The Town, The Departed and Black Mass will quickly find themselves at home in this sleaze-ridden new show, made by Showtime and brought to us by Sky Atlantic. Created and largely written by Chuck... Read more... |
The Kitchen review – more gangsters' molls taking over the reinsWednesday, 18 September 2019![]() Three women decide to take over their husbands’ criminal activities, proving more than a match for the men who dominate the underworld. If this outline of The Kitchen sounds familiar, it’s because it was just last year that Steve McQueen’s... Read more... |
The Informer review - tough but tin-eared B-movieThursday, 29 August 2019![]() If it wasn’t for bad luck, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) wouldn’t have any luck at all. Being an Iraq special forces veteran jailed for protecting his wife in a bar fight seems wretched karma enough. Released as an undercover informant on the Polish... Read more... |
Power, politics and Peaky Blinders - the Shelby family return for Series 5Thursday, 22 August 2019![]() This is how Steven Knight pictured Peaky Blinders when he first set about creating it. “I was very keen not to do a traditional British period drama, especially where it comes to depictions of working class people. Where the impulse is to say ‘it’s... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, Episode 4 Series 2, BBC One review - murders aplentyWednesday, 14 August 2019![]() Life on the Welsh coast isn’t getting any easier: defendant Madlen was found guilty of murder, husband Evan was coming home from prison, and Faith had just given Steve Baldini a rather uncomfortable snog on the beach. She’s probably pining for that... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: La repriseWednesday, 07 August 2019![]() Who’d have thought a play about a homophobic hate crime could be so much fun? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a little. But there are certainly lighter moments in La reprise, provocative Swiss-born director Milo Rau’s production with his... Read more... |
Rachel DeLoache Williams: My Friend Anna review - a fraudster for the Instagram age?Tuesday, 06 August 2019![]() Of all the ventures that super-fraudster Anna Delvey might have chosen as bait for her victims, an exclusive art club was surely a masterstroke. Self regard, cunning, greed and snobbery have never been in short supply in the art world, but in the... Read more... |
