tv
Karajan's Magic and Myth, BBC FourSaturday, 06 December 2014
There have been legendary conductors, and then there was Herbert von Karajan. He was a colossus of post-World War Two classical music, equipped with fearsome technical mastery allied to a vaguely supernatural gift for extracting exquisite sounds from orchestras. But that wasn't all. An expert skier with a passion for high-performance cars and flying his own jet, he was as charismatic as a movie star or sporting idol. Read more...
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The Story of Funk: One Nation Under a Groove, BBC FourSaturday, 06 December 2014
There is a tradition in oral storytelling of individual embellishments and flourishes, of one tale taking many forms – the more it is told, the finer the detail. Characters are added and the narrative extended. In this way, stories stand up to near endless repetition for they always have something new to offer us, there is always something new to learn. Read more... |
Imagine... Colm Tóibín: His Mother's Son, BBC OneWednesday, 03 December 2014
Watching this edition of Imagine… on Colm Tóibín, it was impossible not to be reminded of Graham Greene’s dictum about childhood being the bank balance of the writer. The key event in Tóibín’s childhood came at the age of eight, when his father’s serious illness saw Colm and his brother sent away to live with an aunt, and a sense of acute abandonment set in that saw him develop a stutter. Read more... |
Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty, Channel 5Thursday, 27 November 2014
Dan Jones has turned up to narrate the dramatised story of the Plantagenets in history lite mode, perhaps aimed at capturing a young audience. In Plantagenet country, as shown on TV, we witness a medieval version of soap opera family sagas where all hinges on an overbearing father, a conniving queen, murder, and general mayhem. Read more... |
The Legacy, Sky Arts 1Thursday, 27 November 2014
It’s a dark and Danish so of course there is a body. But it’s not that sort of body. The Legacy parts company from what we know of most Nordic television drama. It’s neither a fetid charnel house in which the cops are as freaky as the killers. Nor is it a place of sunshine, smiles and proportional representation. Read more... |
Posh People: Inside Tatler, BBC TwoTuesday, 25 November 2014
It won’t come as much of a surprise to find that the staff at Tatler are a bit on the posh side – who’d have thought? – but I honestly doubt they’re that much posher than, say, those at The Times, or The Guardian, or that other esteemed people’s champion, the New Statesman. As for the “posh to common” ratio on theartsdesk – without doing an exact head count, I’m not sure we radically break the mould, either. Read more... |
Confessions of a Copper, Channel 4Thursday, 20 November 2014
This will have brought a nostalgic tear to the eye of fans of The Sweeney (the TV show, not the Ray Winstone movie) or GF Newman's still-shocking 1978 series Law and Order. The producers had rounded up seven retired policepersons and got them to spill some of the beans about what policing was like in the Sixties and Seventies. Read more... |
Imagine... Anselm Kiefer, BBC OneTuesday, 18 November 2014
Anselm Kiefer reminds me a bit of someone I once worked for. Totally unpredictable, and possessed of a formidable intelligence and creativity, his mental leaps can be bewilderingly hard to follow, leading occasionally to truly breathtaking results, but crashing and burning just as often. Read more... |
24 Hours in Police Custody, Channel 4Tuesday, 18 November 2014
“Your law is too soft. Make it more strict.” An Albanian illegal immigrant suspected of handling stolen goods was unimpressed by the courtesy extended to him by Bedfordshire Police. Too many pleases and thank yous, he complained. In Tirana the rozzers probably don’t ask you if you have any food allergies. Read more... |
Rosemary's Baby, LifetimeTuesday, 18 November 2014
Polish director Agnieszka Holland is best known for two Holocaust films, both based on remarkable true stories: the 1990 Europa Europa and the 2011 release In Darkness. Here she tackles horror of the supernatural kind. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
The Great Gatsby, London Coliseum review - lavish and lively...
In 2012, an eight-hour long version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby...
Philharmonia, Alsop, RFH / Levit, Abramović, QEH review - mi...
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The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck...
It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a...
The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrai...
The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where...
The Ugly Stepsister review - gleeful Grimm revamp
Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our...
Album: Self Esteem - A Complicated Woman
Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy...
Flintoff, Disney+ review - tumultuous life and times of the...
Documentaries about sports stars are now a dime a dozen, but you can only be as good as your subject matter. We know Andrew Flintoff (usually...
Personal Values, Hampstead Theatre review - deep grief that...
“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad; they may not mean to, but they do.” These lines from Philip Larkin’s 1975 poem, “This Be the Verse”, sum up...
Album: Jenny Hval - Iris Silver Mist
Had I read the contextual blurb about Jenny Hval's latest album first, I might have assumed it was a perfume company collaboration. The album is...