England
Down Cemetery Road, Apple TV review - wit, grit and a twisty plot, plus Emma Thompson on top formSaturday, 01 November 2025
Back in 2003, when Mick Herron was a humble sub-editor, his debut novel was published, the first of what became a four-volume series, the Zoë Boehm thrillers. Inevitably, after the success of his later Slow Horses series, television has snaffled... Read more... |
The Railway Children, Glyndebourne review - right train, wrong stationSaturday, 01 November 2025
If the distance from Festen to The Railway Children looks like a long stretch of track, remember that Mark-Anthony Turnage’s operas have often thundered through the drama of shattered families mired in mystery and secrecy – all the way back to the... Read more... |
Iron Ladies review - working-class heroines of the Miners' StrikeTuesday, 14 October 2025
The enduring image of the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike is that of men standing arm in arm against police and of mass protests devolving into mayhem – with protesters being beaten and knocked to the ground.But it wasn’t just men who were on the front... Read more... |
Lee Miller, Tate Britain review - an extraordinary career that remains an enigmaSaturday, 04 October 2025
Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective begins with a soft focus picture of her by New York photographer Arnold Genthe dated 1927, when she was working as a fashion model. The image is so hazy that she appears as dreamlike and insubstantial as a... Read more... |
Murder Before Evensong, Acorn TV review - death comes to the picturesque village of ChamptonFriday, 03 October 2025
Rockin’ vicar the Rev Richard Coles is not only a C of E priest and former member of Bronski Beat and The Communards, but also a purveyor of crime fiction in the shape of his Canon Clement mysteries. The first of these was Murder Before Evensong,... Read more... |
Measure for Measure, RSC, Stratford review - 'problem play' has no problem with relevanceFriday, 03 October 2025
An opening video montage presents us with a rogues' gallery of powerful men who have done bad things. Plenty of the usual suspects appear to stomach-churning effect, but no ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, sentenced last week to five years in prison by... Read more... |
The Hack, ITV review - plodding anatomy of twin UK scandalsMonday, 29 September 2025
The latest instalment of the ITV drama department’s attempts at trial by television is another anatomy of a scandal, but with little of the emotive power of Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It’s an odd, ungainly construct that attempts to meld two... Read more... |
Album: Robert Plant - Saving GraceSaturday, 20 September 2025
Robert Plant is magnificently well-equipped to shine as a consummate musical survivor: not only has his voice kept its magic, with a range from sensual caress to ecstatic howl, but he’s deeply rooted in timeless music, Scots-Irish and American folk... Read more... |
The Lady from the Sea, Bridge Theatre review - flashes of brillianceFriday, 19 September 2025
Like the lighting that crackles now and again to indicate an abrupt change of scene or mood, Simon Stone's version of The Lady from the Sea is illuminated by the sense of adventure and excitement one has come to expect from this singular artist.... Read more... |
Romans: A Novel, Almeida Theatre review - a uniquely extraordinary workFriday, 19 September 2025
OMG! I mean OMG doubled!! This is amazing! Or is it? Can Alice Birch’s Romans: A Novel at the Almeida Theatre really be the best play on the London stage, or is it not? Can it be both brilliant and exasperating? At one and the same time?... Read more... |
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band fails to revive past gloriesMonday, 15 September 2025
That difficult second documentary – or if you will, “rockumentary” – seems to have been especially challenging for Spinal Tap, since it arrives no less than 41 years after its predecessor, This Is Spinal Tap. The latter has become renowned as a... Read more... |
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly elegiac final chapter haunted by its pastSaturday, 13 September 2025
It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of posh folk at the turn of the 20th century. The Granthams are facing a lowering of their status, and it’s time to... Read more... |
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