police
I See You, Royal Court TheatreMonday, 07 March 2016
An innocently-intended Friday night out turns into something fearsome indeed in I See You, a Royal Court co-production with the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, that puts the tensions of post-apartheid South Africa under a sorrowful microscope.At the... Read more... |
Happy Valley, Series 2, BBC OneWednesday, 10 February 2016
“It’s routine, it’s procedure.” “It’s wank, it’s toss.” As you can tell, Happy Valley is back. If Sally Wainwright made bespoke ironmongery or dry stone walls or exceedingly good cakes, her work would come by royal appointment. Instead you can tell... Read more... |
Luther, Series 4, BBC OneWednesday, 16 December 2015
Some things never change. Once more, we join DCI John Luther – though only for a two-part special – as he glues himself to the trail of a serial killer. And once again Luther is played by Idris Elba, a man who can freeze time or make villains throw... Read more... |
From Darkness, BBC OneMonday, 05 October 2015
This is the first of two new TV series this week to feature a female police officer investigating the discovery of long-buried skeletons (the other one is Thursday's Unforgotten on ITV). The two shows are different in tone, but still reminiscent of... Read more... |
The Legend of Barney ThomsonThursday, 23 July 2015
Its title may hint at exotic worlds – a Western, even – but Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut is anything but. Carlyle himself plays the title character, one of life’s losers (“haunted tree” being one of the more memorable descriptions we get of... Read more... |
True Detective, Series 2, Sky AtlanticTuesday, 23 June 2015
Last year's debut series of True Detective starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in a fascinating slice of metaphysical Southern Gothic. That's all gone now though, because this time, writer Nic Pizzolatto has shunted the action out to the... 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... |
The Met: Policing London, BBC OneTuesday, 09 June 2015
This is supposed to be a major five-part documentary series probing into the innards of the Metropolitan Police, but it felt suspiciously like W1A in uniform. Was it the muted but insistently ominous background music, always trying to tell us that... Read more... |
The Angry Brigade, Bush TheatreFriday, 08 May 2015
Today, terrorism means killing as many innocent people as possible. Fear is created by completely random attacks, so that no one feels safe. But there was a time, in the past, when political anarchists would focus their attacks on selected targets... Read more... |
No Offence, Channel 4Tuesday, 05 May 2015
There’s been much hullabaloo surrounding the new series from Paul Abbott – and with good reason. It’s a decade since we’ve seen any TV from the creator of State of Play and Clocking Off and, given the impact and lasting legacy of Shameless,... Read more... |
Spiral, Series 5, BBC FourSunday, 11 January 2015
It's a poignant moment for the return of this superior French police drama. With the Paris terrorist crisis the top story across all media, we rejoin our fictional police captain Laure Berthaud to find her still in emotional fragments following the... Read more... |
The Fall, Series 2 Finale, BBC TwoFriday, 19 December 2014
Before the second series of The Fall began, I was watching Gillian Anderson being interviewed on This Morning. While the subject matter of the drama - a tense game of cat and mouse between Anderson’s DSI Stella Gibson and Jamie Dornan’s perverted... Read more... |
