Sky Atlantic
ZeroZeroZero, Sky Atlantic review - how drug money makes the world go roundFriday, 05 February 2021Based on a book by Roberto Saviano, author of the Neapolitan gang saga Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero (Sky Atlantic) is an account of the international drugs trade and the way its tentacles wrap themselves around the entrails of societies at all levels. It’... Read more... |
Tin Star: Liverpool, Sky Atlantic review - massed mayhem on MerseysideFriday, 11 December 2020Breaking away from the outlandish shenanigans in Little Big Bear in the Canadian wilds of its first two series, this third outing for Tin Star brings Jack Worth (Tim Roth), wife Angela (Genevieve O’Reilly) and daughter Anna (Abigail Lawrie) back... Read more... |
The Undoing, Series Finale, Sky Atlantic review - bluff and double-bluff as the truth is revealedTuesday, 01 December 2020Throughout its preceding five episodes, The Undoing (Sky Atlantic) has skilfully, if a little shamelessly, kept the fickle finger of suspicion in perpetual motion. Though Hugh Grant’s oily, untrustworthy oncologist Jonathan Fraser has been smack in... Read more... |
The Good Lord Bird, Sky Atlantic review - picaresque account of the myth of John BrownThursday, 19 November 2020On the face of it, this new Sky Atlantic series sounded as though it might be a grave and sombre slice of American history, telling the story of the anti-slavery crusader John Brown and how his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia helped push America... Read more... |
The Undoing, Sky Atlantic review - trouble in paradise for gilded Manhattan coupleTuesday, 27 October 2020Plenty of pedigree wattage has been packed into this slickly addictive new HBO drama (showing on Sky Atlantic). The twin headliners are affluent Manhattan couple Grace and Jonathan Fraser (Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, the latter basking in the high... Read more... |
Little Birds, Sky Atlantic review - decadence and intrigue in 1950s MoroccoWednesday, 05 August 2020Diarist, novelist and writer of erotica Anaïs Nin lived a brilliantly-coloured life littered with affairs with literary A-listers (Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell et al). She might have been delighted by this playfully-written and... Read more... |
Mrs America, BBC Two review - how a conservative revolutionary scuppered the Equal Rights AmendmentThursday, 09 July 2020In the midst of our increasingly confrontational politics of race and gender, it was a timely move to make this series (on BBC Two) about Seventies radical feminism and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the USA, even if some of the... Read more... |
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Sky Atlantic review - the good, the bad and the unspeakableThursday, 02 July 2020American history of the 1930s and ‘40s suddenly seems to be all the rage on TV, cropping up in the reborn Perry Mason, Das Boot and now this new incarnation of Penny Dreadful (Sky Atlantic). The original was a blowsy Gothic mash-up of Dracula,... Read more... |
Das Boot, Series 2 Finale, Sky Atlantic review - deeper and darkerWednesday, 01 July 2020The second series of Das Boot (Sky Atlantic) began strongly, and by the time we reached this last pair of episodes it was almost too agonising to watch. You could argue that it sometimes overreached by stretching the scope of the narrative to... Read more... |
My Brilliant Friend, Season 2: The Story of a New Name, Sky Atlantic review – a troubling friendship deepensTuesday, 30 June 2020In her surprisingly self-revealing collection of essays and interviews Frantumaglia (Neapolitan dialect word for a disquieting jumble of ideas), the writer who calls herself Elena Ferrante often ponders the metamorphosis from novel to film. “The... Read more... |
Perry Mason, Sky Atlantic review - low life and hard times in Depression-era LATuesday, 23 June 2020Rather like David Suchet’s Poirot, the world will always think of Raymond Burr as the doughty defence lawyer Perry Mason, whom he played in nine TV series and 26 TV movies between 1957 and 1993. But Burr’s Mason existed before the age of the prequel... Read more... |
Das Boot, Series 2, Sky Atlantic review - multi-layered war drama goes from strength to strengthWednesday, 10 June 2020Das Boot made an impressive debut early last year with its entwined narratives of war by land and sea. This second instalment (Sky Atlantic) looks set to be better still, exploring the strata of life under Nazi occupation in the German-run port of... Read more... |