thu 28/03/2024

Damian Lewis

Summer and Smoke, Duke of York's Theatre review – Patsy Ferran's remarkable performance

This production of Tennessee Williams’ neglected classic, Summer and Smoke, arrives from the Almeida into the West End with five-star plaudits for its pitch-perfect performances and pressure-cooker intensity. In an ideal world, this should guarantee...

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Billions, Sky Atlantic

The pre-title sequence – in which a middle-aged man without any trousers lies trussed up on the floor – immediately tells us that we are not to take Billions too seriously. A woman in thigh-high leather boots with killer heels towers over him....

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Our Kind of Traitor

John Le Carré made it quite clear what he thinks of the new world order in The Night Manager. All together now: a nexus of corrupt money and sinister establishment interests make for cynical realpolitik. It’s a persuasive weltanschauung that plays...

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American Buffalo, Wyndham's Theatre

From the great, gasp-inducing rush of colour when the curtain opens on American Buffalo to the embrace that closes it, this revival of David Mamet’s career-making rummage through the junkyard of the American Dream has you in a vice-like grip. It’s...

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Wolf Hall, Series Finale, BBC Two

Wolf Hall divided viewers from the off. It mesmerised many and left a vocal minority cold, for whom apparently - mystifyingly - it has all been a bit dull. The dialogue was too elliptical, the politics tricksy and convoluted (who is this Holy...

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Wolf Hall, BBC Two

For weeks and weeks, the BBC has been borrowing Anne Boleyn’s tactic of seduction. Henry VIII was vouchsafed occasional access to his future bride’s breasts, but no more until she was queen. It’s felt rather like that being fed Wolf Hall trailers...

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Wolf Hall comes to BBC Two

You read the book, you saw the play, and in January you can see the BBC's new six-part dramatisation of Wolf Hall. Cunningly adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan and directed by Peter Kosminsky, the series promises to be both a faithful...

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Homeland, Series 3 Finale, Channel 4

Homeland's coming home? Well not exactly, but the conclusion to this crazy, mixed-up third series did suddenly feel as if the writers had finally managed to express something that they'd been groping towards for the last three months. Namely, if the...

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Homeland, Series 2, Channel 4

Surfing in on the back of six Emmy awards, Homeland's second season opened with a sizzling episode which banished any lingering doubts about the improbabilities of the ending of series one. Like, for instance, the way zealous Marine-turned-suicide...

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Homeland, Series Finale, Channel 4

The course of the serialised drama finale never did run smooth, particularly in the case of a show like Homeland, which has structured its entire run around a slow-building sense of queasy, paranoid dread with, thus far, very little real payoff.The...

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Homeland, Channel 4

The opening credits of US television’s latest watercooler export Homeland have proved to be one of the critically lauded show’s few divisive elements, yet also encapsulate what could be most interesting about it. The sequence – a fragmented,...

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Homeland, Channel 4

While Homeland is hardly unique in being a TV series born in the shadow of 9/11, it may prove to be one of the most resonant and troubling responses to that ghastly event and its aftermath. Sergeant Nick Brody, who went missing with a fellow Marine...

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