politics
Collaborators, National TheatreWednesday, 02 November 2011
“Smackhead, groin doctor and smut-scribe”: that’s one way in which writer Mikhail Bulgakov is described in John Hodge’s debut stage drama. A kind of wild fantasia spun around incidents from Soviet history, the piece goes on to show how Bulgakov –... Read more... |
The Ides of MarchMonday, 24 October 2011
If you were to play a game as to who should play former US President Bill Clinton in a fictionalised account of his life, then George Clooney – liberal, politically active and drop-dead gorgeous – would surely be your number-one choice. So he must... Read more... |
Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975Friday, 21 October 2011
This is a strangely kaleidoscopic approach to documentary. A selection of recently unearthed footage and interviews which shows the Black Power movement in the USA through the eyes of idealistic Swedish film-makers, now re-edited and framed with the... Read more... |
The Comic Strip Presents: The Hunt for Tony Blair, Channel 4Saturday, 15 October 2011
As this rampant return to our screens repeatedly underlined, one of the great joys of watching The Comic Strip throughout its 30-year frenzy of frantic - if intermittent - silliness has been never knowing what precise manifestation of oddness lurks... Read more... |
Hidden, BBC OneFriday, 07 October 2011
One has learned to approach high-profile BBC dramas with mild apprehension, since apparent promise and oodles of hype frequently turn out to be fig leaves for feeble plotting and a half-baked script (The Hour, this means you. And possibly you too,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Dramatist Lee HallSunday, 02 October 2011
Like his most famous creation, Billy Elliot, Lee Hall left his native North East to pursue what turned out to be a glittering career in the arts. Although I can’t speak for the fictitious Billy, Hall has certainly never forgotten his working-class... Read more... |
The Green WaveWednesday, 28 September 2011
Four years ago a film called Persepolis told the story of a young woman’s experience of revolution in Iran. There has been a modest abundance of Iranian films making their way west over the years, but this distinguished itself from the others by... Read more... |
Spooks, Series 10, BBC OneMonday, 19 September 2011
Am I being paranoid, or are there spies everywhere these days? A quick squiz at the telly guide recently, and you'd have been forgiven for thinking that everyone in London is either employed in the security services or in making films about them.... Read more... |
DVD: A Very British CoupMonday, 12 September 2011
The Conservatives have been in power for years, the working man feels disenfranchised, unemployment is rife, and there’s really bad music on the radio. And then Labour’s long-awaited electoral landslide, and all is right in the world! 1997? Not a... Read more... |
Post MortemMonday, 05 September 2011
Post Mortem is Chilean Pablo Larraín’s follow-up to the extraordinary Tony Manero, and another, even tougher take on his country’s troubled past. While the first film was a blackly comic look at the dictatorship years of the Seventies, this one... Read more... |
Truth and Reconciliation, Royal Court TheatreMonday, 05 September 2011
Can an ordinary wooden chair be an instrument of torture? Of course, every brute investigation makes use of such furniture, whether as a place to tie the victim down, or as a weapon to attack them with. But, as Debbie Tucker Green’s new play so... Read more... |
Page Eight, BBC TwoMonday, 29 August 2011
I think I owe David Hare an apology. When I sat down to watch Page Eight, last night – being, as it is, his latest probing of our moral and political universe – I just assumed that our national intelligence services would be in for a trendy-... Read more... |
