sport
Shane, Amazon Prime review - the outsized life and times of cricket's King of SpinTuesday, 08 March 2022Tragically, Shane Warne’s sudden death at age 52 means that Amazon’s new documentary about him has suddenly become an obituary as much as a celebration.Directed by John Carey, David Alrich and Jackie Munro, Shane does a solid job of tracing Warne’s... Read more... |
King Richard review - Will Smith gives an affecting performance as Richard WilliamsThursday, 18 November 2021It's difficult to know if this biopic of Richard Williams – father of Venus Williams and Serena Williams, two of the greatest tennis players ever (perhaps the greatest in the latter's case) – is true to the facts, or just a version of them.The women... Read more... |
Drive to Survive, Season 3, Netflix review - the agony and the ecstasy of the 2020 F1 campaignSaturday, 20 March 2021The 2020 Formula One season was all set to start in Australia last March when it was derailed by the Covid emergency. The F1 organisers insisted that they’d get the racing back on track somehow, and what sounded like foolhardy bravado was justified... Read more... |
One Man and His Shoes review - beautifully crafted, fast-paced documentarySaturday, 24 October 2020“Black people, since the beginning of time, have always made things cool. Jazz, rock ’n’ roll… pick anything from a cultural standpoint and we have always been the arbitrators of cool,” says sports journalist Jamele Hill. “And it was really no... Read more... |
Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui: 'The disability community is the world community'Tuesday, 25 August 2020In 2018, directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui burst onto the documentary scene with McQueen, a visually stunning study of British fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Acclaim and offers followed, but no-one could have predicted the subject of... Read more... |
Harry's Heroes: Euro Having a Laugh, ITV review - jokey documentary delivers painful emotional truthsWednesday, 20 May 2020Former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly famously commented that football is far more serious than a matter of life and death. This couldn’t quite be said of Harry Redknapp’s renewed adventures of footballers reunited (ITV), yet behind its jokey... Read more... |
Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Netflix review - thrilling documentary series wreaks havoc in the paddockSaturday, 07 March 2020The 2020 Formula 1 season will commence in Melbourne next weekend... unless the race is cancelled because of the mounting coronavirus panic. Everyone will have to self-isolate and watch Netflix instead, so how fortunate that the ‘flix has delivered... Read more... |
Permission review - suspenseful melodrama of a true-life eventThursday, 21 November 2019Permission tells the story of Afrooz, the captain of Iran's National Futsal Team, who is stopped from joining her team at the Asia Cup Final because of the last minute whim of her estranged husband. It is based on Iranian football... Read more... |
The Shiny Shrimps review - worth the plungeSaturday, 07 September 2019Whoever thought of crossing the social conscience of Pride with the sporting acumen of Dodgeball? Out of this unlikely union comes The Shiny Shrimps, a joyous dive into the world of gay water polo. Though it follows your typical obscure sports... Read more... |
Sink or Swim, Channel 4 review - the Channel awaits for these celebritiesWednesday, 28 August 2019Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Joanne McNally/ The Crown Dual/ Maisie Adam/ James McNicholas/ Titania McGrathMonday, 12 August 2019Joanne McNally Assembly George Square ★★★★The area Joanne McNally treads (actually stomps might be a better word, given her fantastically high-energy performance) in The Prosecco Express is not new – she’s 36 and wondering if she should... Read more... |
The Edge review - mind gamesSaturday, 27 July 2019With the vertiginous drama of England’s cricket World Cup victory still fresh, Barney Douglas’s documentary digs into the human cost of a previous ascent, when England’s Test team rose to No 1 in the early 2010s. Made in the dour image of coach Andy... Read more... |