TV arts
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... |
Sky Atlantic seeks TV's higher groundFriday, 14 January 2011
Sky hasn't generally been synonymous with top TV drama, but its new channel, Sky Atlantic HD, is aiming to change that. Launching on 1 February, the channel has been built around Sky's deal with the American HBO network, which means viewers will get... Read more... |
Edgar Allan Poe: Love, Death and Women, BBC FourThursday, 21 October 2010
The recurrent image in this somewhat staid documentary is a monochrome photograph of Poe’s moon of a face with its panda-like eye sockets. Occasionally the camera moves in for a close-up on those eyes - perhaps hoping they’ll reveal something that... Read more... |
The Genius of British Art, David Starkey, Channel 4Monday, 04 October 2010
“Henry VIII is the only king whose shape we remember,” David Starkey tells us in the first of a new series of “polemical essays” on British art. To demonstrate, he reduces the king’s form to its bare Cubist geometry. He sketches a trapezoid for the... Read more... |
The BBC's new TV dawn for the PromsFriday, 23 July 2010
For the couch-bound classical music lover, keeping up with the Proms is pretty straightforward. Step one: open bottle of agreeable claret. Step two: turn on Radio 3 and listen, or watch selected Proms on BBC Two or BBC Four. Or, indeed, catch up... Read more... |
Tim Marlow Meets Terry Jones, Sky ArtsThursday, 08 July 2010
He may be a writer, a director, an actor, a historian, and, of course, a former member of Monty Python, yet rather than being a Renaissance man, Terry Jones is clearly a mediaevalist at heart. We know this not only because he has written well-... Read more... |
Now Newsnight is at it...Tuesday, 06 July 2010The BBC's cultural conscience has been pricked, it would seem, by the World Cup now reaching its endgame in South Africa. Either that or departments don't talk to one another. Singing for Life, Sunday night's documentary on BBC Four about the young... Read more... |
Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor, BBC OneSunday, 06 June 2010
The Doctor Who crew are fond of their encounters with historical characters. In his time, and let's face it he has infinite supplies of it, the Doc has rubbed shoulders with Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie, and recently weathered... Read more... |
Seven Ages of Britain, BBC OneMonday, 22 March 2010
Seven Ages of Britain began in the same week as A History of the World in 100 Objects on Radio 4. You wait a prodigiously long time for a massive cultural overview and then two come along at once. Do they think in a joined-up way about these... Read more... |
The Culture Show: Henry Moore, BBC TwoThursday, 18 March 2010
What emerges from tonight’s Culture Show on Henry Moore, which examines how the sculptor exploited the media (and vice versa), is not the difference between the media of sculpture and television but the similarity. Rather than a simple programme... Read more... |
BBC joins opera talent huntMonday, 25 January 2010The BBC launched today its own popular opera talent hunt (details below), while ITV's Popstar to Operastar has suffered heavy critical attack and disappointing public ratings. The BBC's Commissioning Editor for Music and Events, Jan... Read more... |
The Art of Russia, BBC FourWednesday, 09 December 2009
If Andrew Graham-Dixon's arts career ever goes belly-up, there is surely a microphone with his name on it at Radio 4, so warm and confident and trustworthy is his voice. Judging, however, by his new three-part programme on BBC Four, The Art of... Read more... |
