TV drama
Blue Eyes, Episode 5, More4Saturday, 23 April 2016
Diversity has replaced perversity as a staple of modern drama. Whereas once upon a time an unenlightened viewer might cry – on seeing two men kiss – that they were going to leave the country before homosexuality became compulsory, a scene of mixed-... Read more... |
11.22.63, Fox / NOW TVMonday, 11 April 2016
If this were a British series it would be called 22.11.63, since the title refers to the date on which President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Anyway, this is a TV version of Stephen King's hit novel, and its mix of historical... Read more... |
Marcella, ITVTuesday, 05 April 2016
Can't get enough Scandi Noir? Then why not make your own? With the aid of Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of The Bridge and installed here as screenwriter, ITV has.Take one disturbed anti-heroine suffering from hallucinations and a disintegrating marriage... Read more... |
The Night Manager, Series Finale, BBC OneMonday, 28 March 2016
So at a stroke, The Night Manager has proved that appointment-to-view television is not yet dead in the age of Netflix, and that the BBC can do itself a favour in battling against the best American dramas if it can find a US production partner (AMC... Read more... |
Line of Duty, Series 3, BBC TwoFriday, 25 March 2016
Two years after its brilliant second series, which put Keeley Hawes's DI Lindsay Denton through the wringer with harrowing intensity, Jed Mercurio's bent-coppers drama is back. This time it's Daniel Mays, as Sgt Danny Waldron, sitting in the... Read more... |
Peter Bowker on making 'The A Word'Saturday, 19 March 2016
Films, TV and books about autism often send me down memory lane; my older brother Timothy was one of the first children in the UK to be diagnosed with autism in the early 1960s, and I’ve kept a wary eye on how autism is portrayed ever since I can... Read more... |
Doctor Thorne, ITVMonday, 07 March 2016
As the camera lingered lovingly over landscaped gardens and ravishing English countryside with a stately home parked squarely in the back of the frame, one could hardly avoid slipping into a Downtonesque reverie. Even more so when the assembled posh... Read more... |
The Night Manager, BBC OneMonday, 22 February 2016
John le Carré's 1993 novel The Night Manager was his first post-Cold War effort, and the fortuitous setting of its early scenes in a hotel in Cairo has allowed TV dramatiser David Farr to move the action forward from the post-Thatcher fallout to the... Read more... |
Horace and PeteWednesday, 10 February 2016
“Warning: this show is not a ‘comedy,’” wrote comedian Louis CK in an email alerting fans to the impending arrival of the second episode of his new show, Horace and Pete. “I dunno what it is. It can be funny. And also not. Both. I believe that ‘... Read more... |
We Made It: Stuntwoman Tracy CaudleMonday, 08 February 2016
With a raft of high-quality digital effects available, real stunts might seem a little old-fashioned. In truth, the art of the stunt is alive and well: according to veteran performer Tracy Caudle, not only is it often cheaper to film the real thing... Read more... |
The Good Wife, Series 7, More4 / The Nightmare Worlds of HG Wells, Sky ArtsFriday, 29 January 2016
Seventh series (★★★★) of the superior legal drama (still perversely tucked away on the obscurantist More4), and Alicia Florrick is having to get back to legal basics. Having been blown up by a political landmine in series six, as she made an ill-... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 3 FinaleMonday, 25 January 2016
We have been here before – literally. Morse and his colleagues discreetly observe a gangster’s funeral in Kensal Green cemetery – just as they did in Promised Land, one of the best episodes of Inspector Morse, first broadcast in March 1991. A... Read more... |
