tv
Empire, E4Wednesday, 29 April 2015
What Nashville did for country music, Empire may very well be about to do for the lurid world of hip hop. If not more so. Created by Lee Daniels (director of Precious) and written by Danny Hunger Games Strong, it's about ailing music mogul Lucious Lyon and how he must decide which of his three sons to hand over his Empire Entertainment conglomerate to. Read more... |
Tales From the Tour Bus: Rock 'n' Roll on the Road, BBC FourSaturday, 25 April 2015
This latest Friday night vehicle for archive footage and pop performances was the tour bus, as BBC4 invited us to hop into the back of the van for a quick spin through the "golden age" of touring rock bands (which the producers clearly felt ended with the Eighties). Read more... |
W1A, Series 2, BBC TwoFriday, 24 April 2015
Should the BBC take the piss out of itself? Of course we must all laugh at our own failings, but the function of satire is to laser in on the faults of others for comedic ends. Isn’t it? The satirist's task is to point the finger elsewhere. Juvenal and Swift and Hislop don’t get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “Christ, I’m hilariously bad at what I do. I must tell the world.” Read more... |
This World: World’s Richest Terror Army, BBC TwoWednesday, 22 April 2015
You haven’t had to actually watch the brutal executions staged by Islamic State (IS, or ISIS or ISIL, as it’s also known) to register them: just a single image registered has been more than enough to horrify. Managing to penetrate the world’s consciousness to such an extent has surely been one of the terror group’s most singular achievements. Read more... |
Safe House, ITVTuesday, 21 April 2015
The title is, of course, ironic. The house in question is a rambling refurbished dwelling deep in the Lake District, reached by driving through lonely wind-blasted valleys and across rain-thrashed hillsides. It's where a former policeman, known only as Robert (Christopher Eccleston), has come to heal himself after a traumatic near-death experience. Read more... |
BBC Young Dancer 2015, BBC FourSaturday, 18 April 2015
Lest the BBC Four imprint prove not strong enough a signal, I'll say it loud and clear: don't go into this expecting Strictly, kids. On the evidence of last night's contemporary dance showdown, the first of four section finals, the brand new BBC Young Dancer competition is light years from the razzmatazz, sparkling scoreboards and celebrity judge infighting of the BBC One dance flagship. Read more... |
Newzoids / Thunderbirds Are Go, ITVThursday, 16 April 2015
Who says satire is dead? After this, I would imagine just about everybody. According to Jon Culshaw, one of the prime movers in ITV's new puppet-CGI farrago Newzoids [*], this isn't just Spitting Image revisited because "the puppets have got more of a spikiness, more of an edgy exaggeration to them." You think? One other difference he forgot to mention was that Spitting Image was often really rather good. Read more... |
Wild Ireland, ITVTuesday, 14 April 2015
“A place of ravishing beauty that would completely stop you in your tracks.” So said Christine Bleakley as she introduced the first episode of this six-part series, during which she travels along the Wild Atlantic Way on Ireland's west coast, from County Donegal in the north to County Cork in the south, 15,000 miles of rugged coastline formed over millions of years by the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean. Read more... |
Sex and the Church, BBC TwoSaturday, 11 April 2015
I’ve got no idea what the opposite of dumbing down might be. Swatting up? Whatever it is, it’s surely going to set the tone for the next couple of Friday nights on BBC Two, where Sex and the Church is as erudite a piece of television as we’re going to get in a long time. Read more... |
Code of a Killer, ITVMonday, 06 April 2015
DNA: there’s a lot of it about. Random Googling reveals that, just in the past few days, a new study claims arachnophobia may be programmed into our DNA, that the British share 30 percent of their DNA with the Germans, while in the USA they’re using DNA to track down dog owners who don’t scoop poop. This last may not be what Leicester University geneticist Professor Alec Jeffreys had a mind when he developed techniques in DNA fingerprinting. Read more... |
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