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Reckoning with the Jimmy Savile legacy - Steve Coogan stars in BBC One's four-part 'factual drama'Monday, 09 October 2023
Dramatisations of real-life crime have become all the rage on TV, as screenwriter Neil McKay and producer Jeff Pope are well aware. Their history of morbid collaborations includes See No Evil: The Moors Murders, the saga of serial killers Fred and Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult, and, in Four Lives, the story of serial killer Stephen Port. Read more... |
A different angle on the Anne Frank story in 'A Small Light'Wednesday, 03 May 2023
The Diary of Anne Frank became a Broadway play and has formed the basis of a lengthy catalogue of films and TV series, but the name of Miep Gies is rather less well-known. Yet without Gies the Anne Frank story might never have reached the wider world, since it was she who helped the Frank family, along with four other Dutch Jews, to remain in hiding and evade capture by the Germans from July 1942 until their luck ran out in August 1944. Read more... |
Leslie Phillips: 'I can be recognised by my voice alone'Thursday, 10 November 2022
Leslie Phillips would have known for half a century that at his death, which was announced yesterday, the obituaries would lead with one thing only. However much serious work he did in the theatre and on screen, he is forever handcuffed to the skirt-chaser he gave us in sundry Carry Ons and Doctor films and London bus movies. Read more... |
Helen McCrory: 'If there's one interesting thing about acting it's trying to lose your ego'Monday, 19 April 2021
Each generation is given an actress who can do everything – be intimate with the camera but also coat a back wall in honey from 100 paces. There was Judi Dench, and then there was Imelda Staunton, both loved by all. Read more... |
Larry Kramer: 'I think anger is a wonderful useful emotion'Thursday, 28 May 2020
Larry Kramer, who has died at the age of 84, was the Solzhenitsyn of AIDS who indomitably reported from the gay gulags of Manhattan’s quarantined wards and revolving-door hospices. “I felt very much like a journalist who realises that he has been given the story of his life,” he told me when I met him. Read more... |
Power, politics and Peaky Blinders - the Shelby family return for Series 5Thursday, 22 August 2019
This is how Steven Knight pictured Peaky Blinders when he first set about creating it. “I was very keen not to do a traditional British period drama, especially where it comes to depictions of working class people. Read more... |
On making The Left Behind: 'We've plugged into the mains'Tuesday, 09 July 2019
The Left Behind is a television drama marinated in real-world research. It tells the story of a young man unable to break free from his bullshit job, zero-hour existence, thrown out of his family home when the council decide that as a single man with no dependents he isn’t a housing priority. Read more... |
Franco Zeffirelli: 'I had this feeling that I was special'Saturday, 15 June 2019
"I am amazed to be still alive. Two hours of medieval torment.” Franco Zeffirelli - who has died at the age of 96 - had spent the day having a lumbar injection to treat a sciatic nerve. You could hear the bafflement in his heavily accented English. Read more... |
Bob Dylan Special - Rolling Thunder Revue, NetflixTuesday, 11 June 2019
Tomorrow, Martin Scorsese delivers, via Netflix, two hours and 22 minutes of screen time devoted to Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, following on from the release last week of the latest Bootleg Series boxed set, 14... Read more... |
For Folk's Sake: 'I owe my very existence to Morris dancing'Monday, 01 April 2019
Halfway through filming For Folk’s Sake, a documentary for BBC Four about Morris dancing, I received a package in the post that would dramatically change the course of the programme. It was from my mother. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck...
A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and,...
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story - compelling portrait...
“I was born with the ability and the demon to write. I have been punished for it constantly.”
Written and directed by Sinéad O’Shea, this...
Donohoe, RPO, Brabbins, Cadogan Hall review - rarely heard B...
The name Arthur Bliss always summoned up for me the image of a fuddy-duddy old buffer writing boring music. But as I’ve discovered his work over...
Album: Gigspanner Big Band - Turnstone
For lovers of British folk from the 1970s on, Peter Knight is a potent force – renowned for his years with Steeleye Span, in their 1970s heyday...
All the Happy Things, Soho Theatre review - deep feelings, b...
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Or words to that effect. This quote from Milton’s ...
London Choral Sinfonia, Waldron, Smith Square Hall review -...
The London Choral Sinfonia are a very impressive group, a professional choir who are churning out terrific recordings at a breakneck pace – I...
The Forsythe Programme, English National Ballet review - bra...
It’s hard to think of anyone even half as persistent as William Forsythe in changing the conversation around ballet. The American...
Manic Street Preachers, Barrowland, Glasgow review - elder s...
As you might expect from a Manic Street Preachers gig, literary influences were never far away. A DH Lawrence quote was prominently displayed on...