drama
The Scandalous Lady W, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 August 2015
What exactly do we expect when a drama opens with the declaration, “This is a true story”? The Scandalous Lady W, based on Hallie Rubenhold’s biography Lady Worsley’s Whim, brought us some unusual 18th century marriage shenanigans that ended in one... Read more... |
Partners in Crime, BBC OneMonday, 27 July 2015
Poirot curls an eyebrow and Miss Marple twinkles, but there haven't been a lot of out-and-out laughs in Agatha Christie’s television career. Partners in Crime comes as a pleasurable surprise. It stars David Walliams and Jessica Raine as Tommy and... Read more... |
DVD: The Face of an AngelTuesday, 21 July 2015
The best that can be said of The Face of an Angel is that it’s based around an interesting idea. Instead of dramatising the story of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia and what surrounded the case, director Michael... Read more... |
The WondersWednesday, 15 July 2015
Somewhere in rural Italy around the border of Umbria-Lazio and Tuscany, a family is trying to make the best of trying circumstances. Their mainstay is the production of honey. They have sheep. There are blackberries on their land. But money is short... Read more... |
The Saboteurs, More4Saturday, 27 June 2015
The 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, documenting the Allies' mission to stop the Nazis from going nuclear, is to historical accuracy what David Starkey is to tact. Or common decency. The Saboteurs however, a Norwegian/Danish/British TV co-... Read more... |
DVD: Force MajeureFriday, 26 June 2015
Pinpointing exactly what makes Force Majeure so disquieting is difficult, and a second viewing on DVD confirms this. Overall, the elements of the film are unified so smoothly that focusing on any one of them doesn’t indicate the unexpectedly... Read more... |
Black Work, ITVMonday, 22 June 2015
Drama is all about secrets revealed, discoveries unfurled. Black Work was straight into that territory from the first scene. A man and a woman sat in a car, taking the solace from each other that they couldn’t find at home. As ever in such a... Read more... |
Stonemouth, BBC TwoFriday, 12 June 2015
A young man, in trouble with drunk or drugs, returns to his Scottish family riven by dark secrets? Of course, it’s a new Iain Banks dramatisation, the first since the author’s death two years ago. This version of his 2012 novel Stonemouth attempts... Read more... |
DVD: Far From the Madding CrowdFriday, 05 June 2015
Despite its 19th-century setting, John Schlesinger’s film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd – released to cinemas in 1968 – is a very Sixties film. Amongst the themes of the novel which resonated then are class differences,... Read more... |
The Syndicate, BBC OneWednesday, 03 June 2015
A third series for Kay Mellor’s rags-to-riches series can herald few real surprises. We know, roughly speaking, what we’ll be getting: a cautionary tale – be careful what you wish for – populated by warm, well-drawn and big-hearted characters who... Read more... |
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, BBC OneMonday, 18 May 2015
If it’s about magic, and features sanitised cobbled streets and dark gothic interiors, then Harry Potter comparisons will no doubt be inevitable.And so it has been with this seven-part adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s hefty 2004 novel, Jonathan... Read more... |
1864, BBC FourSunday, 17 May 2015
They must have run out of contemporary Danes to bump off, or coalition governments to form. 1864 is something completely different from Danish national broadcaster DR, and it’s safe to presume it wouldn’t have made it onto British TV without a prior... Read more... |
