tv
Dancing Cheek to Cheek, BBC FourTuesday, 18 November 2014
I am picturing a scene in BBC4’s highly fortified underground headquarters, a conversation between its mastermind-in-chief and a hapless minion. “What do we do well, Stanley?” “History documentaries, boss.” “And what do people, according to the immutable proofs furnished by viewing figures, actually like?” “Ballroom dancing programmes, boss. Costume dramas. And unashamedly populist, good-looking young historians.” “Correct, Stanley. Read more...
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The Fall, BBC Two / Babylon, Channel 4Friday, 14 November 2014
The first series of this creepy Belfast-set crime thriller generated a mixture of critical enthusiasm and revulsion for its voyeuristic scenes of the sadistic murder of women. This season two opener [****] didn't give us any more of the latter, but successfully re-established the show's atmosphere of claustrophobic menace. It also probed further into the psychological battle between Gillian Anderson's DS Stella Gibson and Jamie Dornan's low-key but intensely deranged killer, Paul Spector. Read more... |
Puppy Love, BBC FourFriday, 14 November 2014
Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine are two-thirds of the talented team (Jo Brand was the other) who brought us the excellent Getting On, now probably lost to UK screens after three series but which will appear in an American format next year. Read more... |
Downton Abbey, Series 5 Finale, ITVMonday, 10 November 2014
On and on the stately galleon sails. The fifth wodge of Downton Abbey has been light on utter knuckle-gnawing preposterousness. Plots conjured up at random from thin air have been in slightly shorter supply than usual. The very worst you can say of it is that Lord Fellowes is no Agatha Christie. The poor old blighted Bateses have now been subject to a matching pair of cack-handed murder mysteries. Read more... |
The Heart of Country – How Nashville Became Music City USA, BBC FourSaturday, 08 November 2014
It’s supposed to represent everything simple and homely, for a white audience at least, its tales of God, family and heartbreak the stuff of everyday America. For British listeners, more at home with “Parklife’s” dirty pigeons and cups of tea than Dolly Parton or Johnny Cash, the cultural background needs more sketching in, and BBC Four had its work cut out telling the story of a city, and a music both so familiar and so exotic. Read more... |
Life Story, BBC OneThursday, 06 November 2014
David Attenborough’s characteristically soothing narration again described the unceasing struggle for survival in the animal world. In astonishing films from all over the world, we witnessed an enormous variety of tactics for finding homes that not only provided shelter, but protection. In nature, he told us, good homes are all too rare, and we were treated to some not-so-subtle allusions to our own housing crises. Read more... |
Broadmoor, ITVThursday, 06 November 2014
Broadmoor is not a prison. It just looks like one, as reiterated by umpteen craning shots which prowled around the Victorian red-brick exterior, assessing its brute institutional heft from every angle. For the first time, and after five years of negotiation, cameras have been allowed to document what happens inside this mythologised sanctum. Is it really the chamber of horrors of popular imagination? Is this where society’s malignantly insane are locked away for our better safety? Read more... |
Great Continental Railway Journeys, BBC TwoThursday, 06 November 2014
How odd to recall that Michael Portillo was the Thatcherite brat they loved to hate, the man whose 1997 defeat at Enfield Southgate would have caused a Twitter meltdown had the 140-character phenomenon been invented in time. Today's repackaged Portillo has blossomed in all directions, from being a stalwart on The Moral Maze and Andrew Neil's This Week to documentaries about capital punishment and mental health. Read more... |
The Passing Bells, BBC OneTuesday, 04 November 2014
We seem to have spent most of 2014 examining the social, political, historical, geographical and military ramifications of the First World War. You would have thought, therefore, that the upcoming Remembrance Sunday commemorations could have been allowed to stand alone, uncluttered by further efforts to explain or dramatise the events of 1914. Read more... |
The Missing, BBC OneWednesday, 29 October 2014
Given the long shadow cast by the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, it’s sort of surprising that no drama department has commissioned something like The Missing before. It’s not the same story of course. The child alluded to in the title is a five-year-old boy, not a three-year-old girl, and he’s abducted in France rather than Portugal. But it’s impossible not to be aware of the story’s factual parallel. 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.
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