Wales
Hidden, Series Finale, BBC Four review - a whydunnit, not a whodunnitSunday, 29 July 2018
Some contend that this Snowdonia-set mystery was a Scandi hommage too far, a mere recycler of gloom-shrouded riffs familiar from the likes of The Bridge or The Killing. Well yes, there was that element to it, but if you stuck with it it grew into... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, BBC One review - this summer's watercooler dramaFriday, 13 July 2018
How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama. Faced with the sudden disappearance of her... Read more... |
Postcards from the 48% review - wistful memorial to forgotten valuesSaturday, 07 July 2018
Writer and director David Nicholas Wilkinson felt moved to make his reflective, rather melancholy documentary on the 48% who voted to remain in the EU, he says, because nobody else was making one. When it came to funding the project, not a single... Read more... |
Hidden, BBC Four review - a death in SnowdoniaSunday, 10 June 2018
Nordic shmordic. Why travel to Scandinavia to get your dark, disturbing mysteries when you can find them in Wales? You even get subtitles for an extra frisson of otherness.Hidden (or Craith in Welsh) stems from the same BBC Cymru Wales/S4C... Read more... |
CD: Gruff Rhys - BabelsbergWednesday, 06 June 2018
For his fifth solo album (not counting last year’s delayed soundtrack to Set Fire to the Stars) Welsh singer-songwriter and sometime Super Furry frontman Gruff Rhys inhabits an imaginary landscape in order to deal with issues that are all too real.... Read more... |
CD: Gwenno - Le KovThursday, 01 March 2018
There was a hint of what was to come in Gwenno Saunders’ debut, Y Dydd Olaf. It was, for the most part, a Welsh-language affair, save for the closing track “Amser”, a song sung in Cornish and the album’s dizzying slow dazzle. For her follow-up, Le... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: I Am Not a WitchSaturday, 20 January 2018
Rungano Nyoni’s debut feature premiered at last year’s Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, and immediately marked the Lusaka-born, Wales-raised director down as a figure to watch. Putting her film into any category is more challenging, though, with... Read more... |
Art UK, Art of the Nation review - public art in a private spaceWednesday, 17 January 2018
Art fairs are vaguely promiscuous. So much art, so many galleries, so very many curators. They’re a glut for the eye yet curiously anodyne — the ranks of white cubicles could belong to a jobs fair, except there’s a Miró round the corner. And it’s... Read more... |
Blu-ray: JabberwockyTuesday, 28 November 2017
Jabberwocky is all the more enjoyable once you get past what it isn’t; Terry Gilliam’s 1977 directorial debut is a medieval romp starring Michael Palin and a short-lived Terry Jones, but audiences shouldn’t expect a Monty Python film. Gilliam and... Read more... |
The Bear, Mid Wales Opera review - small stage, big ambitionsSaturday, 25 November 2017
Go west, opera-lover: Mid Wales Opera is back in business. In fact, it’s been back since spring this year, when it toured venues in Wales and England with a warmly reviewed Handel Semele and a striking (and impressively cast) Magic Flute inspired by... Read more... |
CD: Goldie Lookin' Chain - Fear of a Welsh PlanetSaturday, 28 October 2017
Although primarily known for "Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do", Goldie Lookin' Chain have actually been around longer than you'd imagine. The Welsh comedy collective was formed at the turn of the millennium, and Fear of a Welsh Planet is,... Read more... |
We're Still Here, National Theatre Wales review - powerful protest and heartfelt theatre-makingWednesday, 20 September 2017
Port Talbot (population 38,000) is a town on the south Wales coast famous for two things: steel and actors. The birthplace of Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen made a rare foray into the national consciousness at the beginning of... Read more... |
