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Luther, Series 4, BBC OneWednesday, 16 December 2015
Some things never change. Once more, we join DCI John Luther – though only for a two-part special – as he glues himself to the trail of a serial killer. And once again Luther is played by Idris Elba, a man who can freeze time or make villains throw down their weapons merely by gazing into the camera with an expression of quizzical world-weariness. Read more...
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Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain - Reconquest, BBC FourWednesday, 16 December 2015
The second instalment of this three-part series on the history of Spain (from the BBC in collaboration with the Open University) told a tale that is probably still relatively unfamiliar in the Anglophone world. That’s despite the fact that one of its star turns was the financing by that fervently religious 15th century Iberian power couple, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, of the legendary voyage of Christopher Columbus. Read more... |
Blast Off Live - ground control to Major TimTuesday, 15 December 2015
The caption on Victoria Derbyshire’s morning programme said it all: "Tim Peake Blast Off". Tuesday morning is usually a quiet backwater of daytime TV, but today it hosted the most frenzied focus on space travel in the UK since Helen Sharman flew to the Mir space station in 1991. Nearly a quarter of a century on, British interest has peaked once again as Major Tim Peake became the first Briton to blast off for the international space station. Read more... |
The Last Kingdom, Series Finale, BBC TwoFriday, 11 December 2015
Though Alfred the Great was renowned for educational and social reforms as much as for whupping the Danes on the battlefield, I'd never pictured him the way David Dawson has been playing him in The Last Kingdom. Pallid and sickly-looking, and plagued by all-too-human frailties, this Alfred looked more like a weedy consumptive poet than the midfield dynamo of embattled Ninth Century England. Read more... |
Secrets of the Mona Lisa, BBC TwoThursday, 10 December 2015
There’s a lot of breathless frontloading in television documentaries. The headlines promising shock and awe coming up are posted in the opening edit as a way of hooking in the remote-wielding viewer. Very often as presenters stump around history’s muddy digs or leaf through dusty old tomes, the revelations vouchsafed turn out to be a bit iffy, a bit yeah but no but so what? The hyperventilation is often a precursory guarantee of bathos. You’d be better off reading the book. Read more... |
London Spy, Series Finale, BBC TwoTuesday, 08 December 2015
Well, they're saying this was the final episode, but these days you never know how long TV's ratings-hungry marketeers might eke a successful show out for. London Spy 2 would be a major ask, considering how this series somehow spun a bare minimum of content (even though it was shrouded in oodles of atmosphere) out to five episodes. Still, the ending didn't really end, so watch this space. Read more... |
I'm Not in Love: The Story of 10cc, BBC FourSaturday, 05 December 2015
10cc were the closest the Seventies came to a Fab Four. They were multi-talented vocalists and instrumentalists, came from Lancashire, were technologically ahead of the curve, wrote classy, inventive pop songs in a bewildering array of styles, suffered from dodgy management, were lucky to find one another and calamitously split up far too soon. Since when they’ve cast a very long shadow indeed. Read more... |
Toast of London, Channel 4Thursday, 03 December 2015
Jon Hamm, Mad Men’s swooningly handsome Don Draper, is not only a fine celebrity catch for a series rapidly gathering comic momentum. Since nothing in Toast of London is ever to be taken at face value, Hamm is also two kinds of puns: ham on toast, the snack, and ham, the exaggerated style of acting much in evidence during the show. It all added up to another delicious episode of this extravagantly multi-layered show. Read more... |
Dan Cruickshank: Resurrecting History – Warsaw, BBC FourThursday, 03 December 2015
Dan Cruickshank, that enthusiastic architectural historian, who likes nothing better than some scaffolding he can clamber up to get a better look, revealed that as a child of seven he moved some 60 years ago to Warsaw with his family. His father, then a member of the Communist Party, was posted to the Polish capital by the Daily Worker as their correspondent. Read more... |
The Secret Life of 5 Year Olds, Channel 4Friday, 27 November 2015
Kids today eh? Eh? Ask them what they want to be and they’ll probably reply, “famous” or “rich.” I mean, really… what do they aspire to? What do they want? Wearable tech and a free pass to the Boot Camp stage of The X Factor at a guess. Tell you what, let's ask five-year-old Emily. "Emily, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "A jelly maker. A pencil sharpener!" Ooooooookay. I wasn’t expecting that. Good answer. I hope, one day, she achieves her dream. Read more... |
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