tv
Jessica Jones, NetflixThursday, 26 November 2015
After the roaring success of Daredevil this year, Marvel brings us the next instalment in the TV rendering of their universe – or part of it at least. Jessica Jones, created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos in 2001, is a failed superhero and volatile PI who copes with her demons by drinking so heavily that at least one of her superpowers seems to reside in her liver. Super strength, near-flight and a fine line in withering sarcasm make up the rest. Read more... |
Capital, BBC OneWednesday, 25 November 2015
If the title wasn’t already occupied, television-wise, the BBC might have titled Capital “The Street”. It’s got the high soar-aways over urban geography that recall the soaps, but here they spread wider, taking in a metropolis. Read more... |
Arena: Night and Day, BBC FourMonday, 23 November 2015
Arena is the longest-running arts documentary programme for television at the BBC, and perhaps the world: as the BBC itself phrases it, this compendium celebration presented 24 hours in 90 minutes for 40 years, marking the show's latest anniversary. Conceived by the ever-creative and energetic Humphrey Burton all that while ago, Arena has made over 600 films, looking at high and low culture with equal curiosity, alacrity and even audacity. Read more... |
The Bridge, Series 3, BBC FourSunday, 22 November 2015
The Saga saga has come round for a third turn of the wheel. Much water has flowed under The Bridge since series two. Without wishing to provoke a visit from the spoiler Stasi, it is safe to reveal that Martin is no longer in the picture. He is currently enjoying Her Danish Majesty’s hospitality, and over the water in Malmö Saga is partnerless. Read more... |
Imagine: The Last Impresario, BBC OneWednesday, 18 November 2015
Nearly 20 years ago the West End was in a lather of excitement about a show called Voyeurz. A "musical revue" set in a nightclub on Manhattan, it was all about a young girl venturing into the uncharted caverns of her own sexuality, and it was opportunistically crammed with hot sapphic action. It tanked. Its producer and co-director was Michael White, known to his legion of chums as Chalky. Read more... |
Storyville: Orion - The Man Who Would Be King, BBC FourTuesday, 17 November 2015
The story of Orion, aka Jimmy Ellis, really was a case of truth being weirder than fiction. “He couldn’t have failed, if Elvis had never lived,” we heard from Shelby Singleton, boss of Nashville’s Sun Records, which launched his career – meaning that Ellis was born with a voice so close to the King’s that he couldn’t escape becoming something of a stand-in. Read more... |
David Gilmour: Wider Horizons, BBC TwoSunday, 15 November 2015
Had he not become one of the pivotal members of Pink Floyd, it's not difficult to imagine that David Gilmour might have become an academic like his father Douglas (who was a lecturer in zoology and genetics at Cambridge), or maybe a high-flying lawyer with leftish inclinations. Read more... |
Josh, BBC ThreeThursday, 12 November 2015
Josh Widdicombe is the tousle-haired guy at the end of the sofa on Channel 4's The Last Leg – where, as in his stand-up, he's permanently baffled by life and quickly reaches screaming pitch about the most minor of controversies. And so, in his new sitcom – written with Tom Craine, a fellow stand-up and his former flatmate – he plays to type as a tousle-haired guy who's permanently baffled by life and quickly, etc, etc. Read more... |
Imagine... My Curious Documentary, BBC OneWednesday, 11 November 2015
This "mockumentary" concerning the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was incredibly well-intentioned and unintentionally baffling. It operated on so many levels at once that the viewer could all too easily keep falling through the cracks. Was it about the wonderfully successful play and its productions, the novel that inspired it, or, in the real world, children and adults on the autistic spectrum, and their interaction with society? Read more... |
London Spy, BBC TwoTuesday, 10 November 2015
Penned by Tom Rob Smith, the author of Soviet-era thriller Child 44, London Spy imparts unexpected spin to the espionage genre. Among other things, apart from the title it was by no means clear that it had anything to do with spies for virtually all of the first episode, although the camera did linger suspiciously over the MI6 building on the South Bank at one point. And once, the protagonists spotted a dubious-looking car in their rear-view mirror. Read more... |
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