tv
Cats v Dogs, BBC TwoFriday, 05 February 2016
This slightly ludicrous programme is really a chance to see a charming range of dogs and cats, based on an assumption that by comparing cats and dogs we humans can decide which species is best. But best for what? As pets, domestic companions, survivors in the human jungle? Read more...
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Camila's Kids Company: The Inside Story, BBC OneThursday, 04 February 2016
In 2005, Lynn Alleway made a film about Kids' Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh called Tough Kids – Tough Love. In June last year, Alleway was invited to film her again. It wasn't spelled out in this new documentary, but you'd have to assume Batmanghelidjh was hoping to enlist some sympathetic media coverage, since the management and funding of Kids Company was coming under a gathering crescendo of scrutiny. Read more... |
Rise of the Superstar Vloggers, BBC ThreeTuesday, 02 February 2016
This debate about the future of the BBC might be missing the point. In the black corner scowls the Dark Lord of Swingeing Arts Cuts John Whittingdale, while in the fluffy corner is everyone who doesn’t want anything to change. By their “I heart Lyse Doucet” shall you know the latter. We’re all of us, on both sides of the fence, of a certain vintage. The kids, who like it or not seem an absolute dead-cert shoo-in to inherit the future, haven’t got a dog in this fight. Why? 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-fated attempt to become State's Attorney, she's now trying to start her own law firm from home and scuffling for work. Read more... |
The Real Marigold Hotel, BBC TwoWednesday, 27 January 2016
One novel and two movies, but the BBC cheekily claims that this three-part series was inspired by Deborah Moggach’s 2004 novel These Foolish Things, and the pair of films The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – but not related. How did the programme-makers come up with this, and keep a straight face? 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 quarter of a century has passed (along with John Thaw) yet ITV are still trying to breath new life into the ratings warhorse. Read more... |
Stan Lee's Lucky Man, Sky1Saturday, 23 January 2016
Sky are making a big deal about the fact that this new fantasy-drama is based on an idea by Marvel Comics superhero Stan Lee, but the "lucky man" is surely the 93-year-old Lee himself. "They [Sky's production team] went back to England to do the work," said the LA-based Stan. "I stayed here to take the credit." Read more... |
The Story of China, BBC TwoFriday, 22 January 2016
China’s tumultuous recent past attempted to selectively obliterate the history of one of the world’s great and ancient civilisations, with the neatly complementary result in the past several decades of a huge upsurge in Chinese studies, East and West, from publications to exhibitions to enormous advances in archaeology. At the same time, a sense of preserving the material past has been threatened by urban development, a habit copied perhaps from the West. Read more... |
The Jihadis Next Door, Channel 4Wednesday, 20 January 2016
A year ago, Channel 4 aired Jamie Roberts's documentary Angry, White and Proud, the result of a year Roberts spent getting to know members of far-right splinter groups. Now here's the follow-up, this time the result of two years' research into Islamic extremism in Britain. Read more... |
Crashing, Channel 4Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Created and written by the abundantly talented Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also stars, Crashing is set among a group of twenty- and thirtysomethings living in a disused hospital in London, which the characters are “protecting” – sort of legalised squatting, where the sanctioned occupants pay a small rent and protect the building from being taken over by, well, squatters. Read more... |
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