TV drama
Top Boy, Channel 4Thursday, 03 November 2011
One striking fact about Ronan Bennett's punishing four-part East End gang drama is that, so far, there hasn't been any sign of a policeman. No scruffy, down-at-heel detective with a chip on his shoulder, no thuggish Flying Squad heavies, and... Read more... |
Hidden, Series Finale, BBC One/ The Slap, BBC FourThursday, 27 October 2011
Many commentators have professed bafflement at the tangled layers of Hidden, as it probed into a sick and murky past while apparently dead characters came back to haunt the present. Right to the end, writer Ronan Bennett kept his cards carefully... Read more... |
Death in Paradise, BBC OneTuesday, 25 October 2011
You'd think a lengthy shoot on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe would be any actor's dream, but apparently Ben Miller found making Death in Paradise too hot and uncomfortable. That means he's perfectly cast as DI Richard Poole, a detective from... Read more... |
The Walking Dead, Series 2, FXSaturday, 22 October 2011
At the end of the first series, we left our bedraggled band of survivors in Atlanta, their expectations dashed that they might be able to find some glimmer of hope at the Center for Disease Control. Instead, all they'd discovered was a lone,... Read more... |
House, Season 8, Sky1Friday, 07 October 2011
Since 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... |
The Body Farm, BBC OneTuesday, 13 September 2011
One didn’t keep a detailed log on the state of decomposition of each and every corpse in all umpteen series of Waking the Dead. Being cold cases, they were none of them too presentable. But did any make quite such a mess as ep one of The Body Farm,... Read more... |
Appropriate Adult, ITV1Sunday, 04 September 2011
Appropriate Adult began with a series of jumpy scenes mapping the bustling domestic landscape of trainee social worker Janet Leach. It was as though we were being offered one last hit of the oxygen of conventional family life (... Read more... |
The Hour, Series Finale, BBC TwoTuesday, 23 August 2011
Part of the fun of watching The Hour, in the absence of a coherent plot, convincing characters and plausible period dialogue, was ruminating on the myriad different ways it could be sliced: a grown-up Press Gang meets Mad Men? The Spy Who Came in... Read more... |
The Man Who Crossed Hitler, BBC TwoSunday, 21 August 2011
Out of the blue, in the middle of the midsummer slump, came this unusual and original one-off play (I say "play" because it would convert naturally to the stage). Finding a new angle from which to explore Hitler and the Nazis might seem impossible,... Read more... |
Spooks terminatedThursday, 11 August 2011
With theartsdesk readers still reeling from the demise of Italianate sleuthing series Zen, now comes news of the axing of glossy MI5 drama Spooks. The BBC has announced that the show's 10th series, starting next month, will be its last, though it... 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... |
Camelot, Series Finale, Channel 4Saturday, 06 August 2011
This wasn't only the series finale, but the last ever episode of Camelot, since the American Starz network has decided to scrap plans for further seasons. It's not hard to see why. After a fairly promising start, Camelot spent several instalments... Read more... |
