tv
Brief Encounters, ITVTuesday, 05 July 2016
Sex sells. That's the well-upholstered thinking behind Brief Encounters. A disparate group of northern women beat off (sorry) the recession by flogging marital aids at saucy Tupperware parties. Shtupperware, if you will. One of them's dear old Penelope Wilton. Goodness. Cousin Violet's eyebrows would perform a pole vault. Read more... |
Freud: Genius of the Modern World, BBC FourFriday, 01 July 2016
Recently the television historian Bettany Hughes, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, energetic, enthusiastic and rather astonished, has tramped across the continents on our behalf, making a clutch of hour-long documentary introductions to the individuals with the most profound influence on human society. Read more... |
The Living and the Dead, BBC OneWednesday, 29 June 2016
This new series by Ashley Pharoah is dramatically different from his previous efforts in Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars, though he still likes travelling though time. His method here was to saw off chunks of Far From the Madding Crowd, stir in some shavings from Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, and then, having donned protective clothing, to squirt in a distillation of The Exorcist. Read more... |
EU Referendum Results – BBC, ITV, Sky NewsFriday, 24 June 2016
And so we come to the end of the most spiteful, divisive and downright deceitful political campaign in living memory. And while we’re on the Ds, I’ll have disingenuous too, thanks. The remain camp was captained by a mildly Eurosceptic prime minister, who called the referendum in an attempt to secure an election victory, while Brexit has been spearheaded by a shambolic, and mildly Europhile, thatched homunculus, who simply wants the other guy’s job. Read more... |
The Good Wife, Series 7 Finale, More4Friday, 24 June 2016
It's amazing that they've managed to sustain The Good Wife over seven series and 156 episodes which have, by and large, maintained a standard of writing and acting which can stand toe to toe with anything else on TV. Apparently it's now being dubbed "television's last great drama" in some quarters, not just because of its quality but also because it aired not on some boutique cable channel or on-demand subscription service but on the mainstream CBS network. Read more... |
The South Bank Show: Joyce DiDonato, Sky ArtsThursday, 23 June 2016
Take Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, and add Handel and Mozart and the Frenchman Massenet, and you have the composers whose operas the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato has made her own. She's one of the few who has become a classic opera diva while remaining true to her roots (she was born in Prairie Village, Kansas, and one of her all-time favourite songs is "Over the Rainbow": remember Dorothy was a Kansas girl too.) Read more... |
The Border, Channel 4Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Have psychologists analysed whether subtitles increase our enjoyment of TV drama, perhaps lending it an extra tincture of the exotic? They do no harm at all to this new Polish drama about border guards protecting the frontier between Poland and Ukraine. In Referendum week, it's a hot topic (these Polish guards, with an Alsatian tracker dog called Osama, don't favour a Merkel-esque open-door policy to refugees trying to slip through the forest). Read more... |
The Disappearance, BBC FourSunday, 19 June 2016
The Disappearance, shown in France a year ago, was adapted from a Spanish drama. Both shows had a more gender-specific title: Desaparecida or Disparue. Read more... |
Eurotrash, Channel 4Saturday, 18 June 2016
It was an exhumation waiting to happen. As the UK ponders trashing Europe, Eurotrash was summoned from the grave to remind voters what they’ll be missing if enough Brits put an X in the exit box. The Europe of Eurotrash is not grey suits and fisheries legislation. Read more... |
Marx: Genius of the Modern World, BBC FourFriday, 17 June 2016
An old subversive Soviet joke has Karl Marx coming back from hell, facing enormous crowds of very unhappy people and telling them, "Oh I'm so sorry – it was only an idea." But what an idea and ideas, as Bettany Hughes's film reminded us. Read more... |
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