prison
The Night Of, Sky AtlanticFriday, 16 September 2016
On the face of it a murder mystery, The Night Of develops steadily into a panoramic survey of the American justice and prison system and attitudes to race and class. Produced by BBC Drama and HBO, it's based on the BBC's 2008 series Criminal Justice... Read more... |
Bobby Sands: 66 DaysFriday, 05 August 2016
There’s much more to Brendan J Byrne’s engrossing, even-handed documentary Bobby Sands: 66 Days than its title might at first suggest. The timeline that led up to the death on 5 May 1981 of the IRA prisoner provides the immediate context – an... Read more... |
The Fear of 13Saturday, 14 November 2015
David Sington’s The Fear of 13 is many things – blisteringly immediate, compelling, emotionally devastating – but at times it may have you pondering whether it fits into any traditional “documentary” category.Over the hour-and-a-half of its run, it... Read more... |
Storyville: Russia's Toughest Prison - The Condemned, BBC FourMonday, 20 October 2014
The initial challenge – and there should be no underestimating the scale of it – of Nick Read’s documentary Russia's Toughest Prison - The Condemned must have been getting into a location which the great majority of its inmates will never leave.... Read more... |
DVD: Starred UpTuesday, 12 August 2014
Director David Mackenzie tells us in this disc’s extras that Starred Up is his first genre film, and Fox’s low-rent sleeve art suggests that this could be another dreary, thuggish Britflick. The prison drama clichés come thick and fast, from the... Read more... |
Starred UpWednesday, 19 March 2014
Director David MacKenzie has made a prison drama for those who don’t like the genre and an ace in the hole for those who do. Starred Up is an example of how quality filmmaking captures an audience no matter what the topic – and here, that quality... Read more... |
Sifting the Evidence: the Great Train Robbery, 50 Years OnTuesday, 17 December 2013
There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train... Read more... |
The Scottsboro Boys, Young VicMonday, 28 October 2013
Forever breaking into song and dance, musicals are fun, fun, fun. They are primarily what folks go to for uplifting entertainment, are they not? Actually, many of the best aren't anything like that simplistic. Opening at the Young Vic last night,... Read more... |
The Love Girl and the Innocent, Southwark PlayhouseWednesday, 16 October 2013
Southwark Playhouse's new production of The Love Girl and the Innocent is London’s first in over 30 years, and there’s a reason Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s play rarely reaches the stage: it’s a lumpy mammoth of a script, demanding a cast upwards of 50... Read more... |
Trash Cuisine, Young Vic TheatreThursday, 06 June 2013
There was a sense of nervous anticipation in the Maria, the Young Vic's studio space. Ninety minutes of torture was on the menu, and I'll admit to feeling some trepidation. But this show - and "show" is the right word - turns out to be a revelation... Read more... |
The Prisoners, BBC OneTuesday, 23 April 2013
“The best times I've ever had were in prison,” says Crystal, aged 23, one of the three inmates being followed in The Prisoners (this was originally planned as episode one, but was bounced from the schedules by the death of Baroness Thatcher). On the... Read more... |
DVD: CapturedFriday, 12 April 2013
While it’s impossible to know the effect of Captured on the few who originally saw it, you can be damn sure it packed a punch. It still does. This unforgettable film was made in 1959 for the Army Kinema Corporation to train personnel in resisting... Read more... |
