Sky
Run, Sky Comedy review - vicarious thrills for the self-isolation eraWednesday, 15 April 2020Watching Run, HBO’s newest seven-part series, feels like off-the-rails escapism: it’s a fast-paced thriller about dropping everything, chasing intimacy and courting danger. It’s a vicarious adventure centred on a woman who has spent too long stuck... Read more... |
Four Kids and It review – a family friendly yarn that needs more magicThursday, 02 April 2020With over one hundred books to her name and several hugely popular TV spin-offs, including the Tracy Beaker adventures, Jacqueline Wilson takes a no-nonsense approach to children’s fiction that reflects the realities of jigsaw families, mental and... Read more... |
Pen15, Sky Comedy review - the horror of adolescent schooldays revisitedWednesday, 01 April 2020The cringe-making horror of adolescent schooldays is vividly re-lived in this US import (on Sky Comedy), but with a cunning twist. Its supposedly confused and hormonal leads are played by 30-somethings Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, who blend... Read more... |
Sunnyside, Sky Comedy review - the immigrant experience and the American dreamTuesday, 17 March 2020The multi-talented Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar, Designated Survivor, House) took a two-year acting sabbatical in 2009 to work for the Obama administration. So he is, in theory, ideally placed to co-create, with Matt Murray, a semi-political TV sitcom... Read more... |
Curfew, Sky One, review - belt up for a budget-price Mad MaxSaturday, 23 February 2019Curfew (Sky One) is a new drama that begins as it means to go on, roaring from nought to 60 with a wildly implausible car chase. An electric blue McLaren is haring and weaving through London, with the law in hot pursuit. Forget the computer-... Read more... |
The Deuce, Sky Atlantic review - a magnificent, sleazy epicWednesday, 27 September 2017There’s a moment in The Deuce (Sky Atlantic) – a rare quiet one – where a working girl called Darlene is visiting a kindly old gent on her books. He has A Tale of Two Cities on his TV, the old black and white version with Dirk Bogarde as Sydney... Read more... |
Election Night 2017, BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, Sky NewsFriday, 09 June 2017The latest test of the nation’s perseverance and patience – a snap election called just before the negotiations for Brexit are due to start – seemed like an extraordinary act of hubris at the start. The initial billing of “Strong and... Read more... |
EU Referendum Results – BBC, ITV, Sky NewsFriday, 24 June 2016And so we come to the end of the most spiteful, divisive and downright deceitful political campaign in living memory. And while we’re on the Ds, I’ll have disingenuous too, thanks. The remain camp was captained by a mildly Eurosceptic prime minister... Read more... |
Drama Matters: Lawless, Sky LivingFriday, 04 October 2013There's no denying the allure of a well-crafted legal drama, and there's also probably a hefty swathe of fans pining for the return of Maxine Peake in Peter Moffat's superior Grays Inn yarn, Silk. They will have found plenty to cheer in... Read more... |
Christmas Dance on Cinema, TV & RadioMonday, 12 December 2011No more is dance the preserve of the few sitting in the theatre - larger companies are leaping hungrily for TV and now cinema screens, having found various ways around the longstanding obstacle of copyright. The BBC is experimenting with live 3D... Read more... |
House, Season 8, Sky1Friday, 07 October 2011Since he hit the ground limping, seven years back, diagnostic genius Gregory House, MD, has been shot, drugged, trapped under a collapsing building, exposed to deadly viruses (his own doing), prosecuted, fired, committed to a psychiatric ... Read more... |
Terra Nova, Sky1Tuesday, 04 October 2011Is it back from the future or forward to the past? We start in the year 2149, and Earth is overcrowded, polluted and staggering towards extinction. Nobody can breathe outdoors without using a rebreather mask, and most plant and animal life has... Read more... |