legal drama
If Beale Street Could Talk review - love defies racism in James Baldwin adaptationSunday, 10 February 2019![]() Films that show a young couple’s love deepening are rare because without personal conflict there’s no narrative progression. They're especially rare in the current mainstream American cinema since romantic dramas are commercially risky, though LGBTQ... Read more... |
Ralegh: the Treason Trial, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - gripping verbatim court caseThursday, 29 November 2018![]() Forget the cloak in the puddle. Never mind potatoes and tobacco. The children's book cliché of Sir Walter Raleigh (or Ralegh as he seems to have preferred in an age of changeable spelling) represents little of the real man and is at best misleading... Read more... |
Black Earth Rising, BBC Two review - Blick's new blockbusterTuesday, 11 September 2018![]() As writer and director, Hugo Blick has brought us two of the twistiest dramas in recent-ish memory (The Shadow Line and The Honourable Woman). Looks like he’s done it again here, if not more so, since the eight-part Black Earth Rising takes as its... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, BBC One review - this summer's watercooler dramaFriday, 13 July 2018![]() How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama. Faced with the sudden disappearance of her... Read more... |
Consent, Harold Pinter Theatre review - exhilaratingWednesday, 30 May 2018![]() Question: is Consent, transferred from the National to the West End, a sharp-tongued comedy or an acute reinvention of a revenge drama? There are more than enough smartly placed laughs throughout the tart, increasingly taut first act, to make you... Read more... |
Mood Music, Old Vic review - riveting critique of the music bizThursday, 03 May 2018![]() Playwright Joe Penhall and the music biz? Well, they have history. When he was writing the book for Sunny Afternoon, his 2014 hit musical about the Kinks, he had a few run-ins with Ray Davies, the band’s lead singer. A couple of years ago The Stage... Read more... |
The Split, BBC One, review - Abi Morgan’s densely packed divorce dramaWednesday, 25 April 2018![]() A few years ago Abi Morgan was everywhere. For the cinema she scripted Shame, The Iron Lady, The Invisible Woman and Suffragette. On television she adapted Birdsong and created The Hour and, most recently, River. But she’s mainly been quiet for a... Read more... |
The Good Fight review - 'flawless writing and acting'Friday, 28 April 2017![]() If Robert King and Michelle King, creators of The Good Wife, took the Joss Whedon line on sequels – “They are inevitably awful” – then we would not have The Good Fight (More4) gracing our screens. But, thankfully, this sequel (actually, more a spin-... Read more... |
DenialThursday, 26 January 2017![]() As alternative facts go, few are as grievous as the assertion that the Holocaust didn't happen. That's the claim on which the British historian (I use that word advisedly) David Irving has staked an entire career. Its day in court provides... Read more... |
Prom 45: The Makropulos Affair, BBCSO, BělohlávekSaturday, 20 August 2016Karel Čapek, the great Czech writer who pioneered some of the most prophetic dramatic fantasies of the early 20th century, thought Janáček was nuts to want to set his wordy play about a 337-year-old woman to music. He could not have anticipated what... Read more... |
The Good Wife, Series 7 Finale, More4Friday, 24 June 2016![]() It's amazing that they've managed to sustain The Good Wife over seven series and 156 episodes which have, by and large, maintained a standard of writing and acting which can stand toe to toe with anything else on TV. Apparently it's now being dubbed... Read more... |
Undercover, Series Finale, BBC OneMonday, 16 May 2016![]() In its final episode Undercover tied up a lot of loose ends and introduced a number of new ones. The biggest loose end to remain unaddressed was pretty big. Nick Johnson was the alias of a policeman who in 1996 went undercover to spy on black... Read more... |
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