TV arts
Imagine... Anselm Kiefer, BBC OneTuesday, 18 November 2014
Anselm Kiefer reminds me a bit of someone I once worked for. Totally unpredictable, and possessed of a formidable intelligence and creativity, his mental leaps can be bewilderingly hard to follow, leading occasionally to truly breathtaking results,... Read more... |
South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2014Monday, 27 January 2014
Poor David Bowie. He didn't win a Grammy for his album The Next Day, and he didn't win a South Bank Sky Arts Award today either. That honour went to Arctic Monkeys and their fifth album AM, as Melvyn Bragg hosted the ceremony at London's Dorchester... Read more... |
Television: 10 Top Performances from 2013Friday, 27 December 2013
No definitive answers to what was "the best" of 2013 of course, and I daresay opinions will differ wildly. For instance, despite the plaudits showered on it elsewhere, I felt that Broadchurch stretched itself too thin after showing initial promise.... Read more... |
Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies, BBC FourFriday, 13 September 2013
BBC Four’s new series Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies is shocking. The overwhelming majority of arts-based TV consists of programmes consigning specialist knowledge/presenters to the sidelines in favour of dumbed-down, easily... Read more... |
The Space makes room for all the arts onlineWednesday, 02 May 2012Now live and online is The Space, the new "freely available digital arts space" developed by Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC. Over the next 6 months, The Space will showcase high-profile arts events from across the UK, adding new... Read more... |
South Bank Show returns to TV with awardsMonday, 02 April 2012The South Bank Show is returning to TV on 27 May on Sky Arts, announces the broadcaster, to be preceded by the ceremony for the 16th South Bank Sky Arts Awards. The awards event on 1 May at the Dorchester Hotel, London, highlights the year's top... Read more... |
2011: Ladies With Ukuleles and Blockbusters With BiteThursday, 29 December 2011
2011 was an excellent year for highly original music from female musicians, two of whom brandished ukuleles yet found quite different ways of using them.New England’s Merrel Garbus (otherwise known as Tune-Yards) put her foot down on the effects... Read more... |
South Bank Show comes to Sky ArtsThursday, 01 December 2011
Three years after it was, as they say, "let go" by ITV, The South Bank Show, with Melvyn Bragg at the helm, is set to return on Sky Arts in 2012. The idea has been in the wind since Sky Arts revived The South Bank Show Awards in January this year,... Read more... |
DVD: Dramarama - SpookyWednesday, 10 August 2011
This series of supernatural dramas from the early 1980s is the sort of thing that could very easily be parodied – has been parodied, in fact, by everyone from Victoria Wood and French and Saunders to The League of Gentlemen and Garth Merenghi's... Read more... |
DVD: MacbethThursday, 30 June 2011
Your Macbeth opens in the round, tailored to a small studio theatre. In entrusting it to television, do you engage someone experienced in the medium to render faithfully the spaces and the talking heads, as Trevor Nunn did for the deservedly... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Hay: Books EtceteraThursday, 02 June 2011
Watching bookaholic punters tramping down windswept country lanes in hiking boots, anoraks and rucksacks instantly alerts you to the singular quality of the Hay Festival, though it's surprising that nobody has grasped the glaring opportunity to... Read more... |
Treme, Sky AtlanticFriday, 18 February 2011
When Treme debuted on HBO in the States, some excitable critics watched the pilot episode and instantly proclaimed it a masterpiece superior even to The Wire. David Simon, who created both shows, may have been delighted. Or on the other hand, he... Read more... |
