tv
The Wrong Mans, BBC Two / London Irish, Channel 4Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Love him or hate him, James Corden undeniably does have a range of talents – actor, writer and co-creator of some very funny comedy (we'll politely forget the car crash of his misguided BBC sketch show with Mathew Horne). And now, dontchaknow, he's come up with another comedy vehicle, The Wrong Mans [****], which had a very accomplished debut last night. Read more... |
Being Paul Gascoigne, ITVWednesday, 25 September 2013
There was a time when England’s greatest and most charismatic footballer of the last 40 years would inspire fine writers to flights of poetry. Karl Miller in the London Review of Books compared him to “a priapic monolith in the Mediterranean sun”. Not to be out-hyperbolised, Ian Hamilton in Granta invoked a Miltonic Old Testament hero in his essay “Gazza Agonistes”. Read more... |
Downton Abbey Series 4, ITV / By Any Means, BBC OneMonday, 23 September 2013
"The price of great love is great misery when one of you dies," intoned the Earl of Grantham lugubriously in this fourth-season opener [****], and the death of Matthew Crawley hovered heavily over the household. His widow Lady Mary haunted the corridors like the Woman in Black, speaking in an even more dolorous monotone than usual. The great Penelope Wilton imbued Matthew's mother Isobel with a piercingly real sense of grief. Read more... |
Vinnie Jones: Russia's Toughest, National GeographicFriday, 20 September 2013
Once you’d got over an initial sense of absurdity at Vinnie Jones as travel guide, to Russia and for National Geographic to boot, a certain logic kicked in: hard country, hard man. Some time after we'd lost count in Vinnie Jones: Russia’s Toughest of how often our guide had described himself as "football hard man and Hollywood tough guy”, something unfamiliar crept into view, namely an element of humility in the face of challenges that boggled the Jones imagination. Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - Marianne Faithfull, BBC OneThursday, 19 September 2013
We know, not least through her own account, of Marianne Faithfull's colourful progress as winsome Sixties pop star, lover of Mick Jagger, junkie on the streets of Soho and her artistic rebirth as gravel-throated chanteuse. Here, her frequently gruelling trawl through archives from the 1930s and '40s helped to explain how she became the artist she is, while throwing up some morbidly fascinating details about the inner workings of the Third Reich. Read more... |
Father Figure, BBC OneThursday, 19 September 2013
Coming to it fresh, it’s hard to imagine Father Figure as the Radio 2 serial it apparently began life as. The first episode of the six-part series is driven by what some would call "visual gags" or "physical comedy", as if writer and star Jason Byrne was so excited by the new medium that he decided to throw everything he could at the camera to see what stuck. Read more... |
What Remains, Series Finale, BBC OneSunday, 15 September 2013
A mouldered corpse, forgotten for years in a tottering Victorian house that teems with secrets? What Remains was only ever heading in one direction. Gothic from the off, episode by episode it got gothicker and gothicker. By the climax there was a messy Jenga of bodies, which was perhaps not unexpected, but did anyone guess quite how many characters would end up with blood on their hands? Read more... |
Peaky Blinders, BBC TwoFriday, 13 September 2013
Much hype has been whipped up around this tale of a gang of thuggish, racketeering bookies in Birmingham just after World War One. It's a pretty good cast, with Helen McCrory's Aunt Polly laying down the law within the criminal Shelby family, Cillian Murphy playing her ambitious nephew Tommy and Sam Neill as sinister Belfast copper Inspector Campbell. But this opener still felt a little wobbly on its feet. Read more... |
Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies, BBC FourFriday, 13 September 2013
BBC Four’s new series Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies is shocking. The overwhelming majority of arts-based TV consists of programmes consigning specialist knowledge/presenters to the sidelines in favour of dumbed-down, easily digestible generalisations mouthed by all-purpose TV-friendly faces. But this three-part series is fronted by, gasp, a composer who uses insider knowledge to hook and hold the viewers. Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - Sarah Millican, BBC OneThursday, 12 September 2013
It's a testament to how good an idea Who Do You Think You Are? is that well into its tenth series (and several others worldwide) it still provides great entertainment – and not a little emotion. Its secret, I suspect, lies in the fact that every family has its stories and dramas and last night's subject, comic Sarah Millican, uncovered some interesting tales buried several generations back, long lost from current family folklore. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Hough, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - where the wild th...
This autumn, the Philharmonia’s “Nordic Soundscapes” season promises music suffused with the epic vistas, and weather, of high latitudes, along...
The Outrun review - Saoirse Ronan is astonishing as an alcoh...
In 2016, Amy Liptrot made a fine publishing debut with a memoir about her alcoholism, The Outrun. Now she has co-written a...
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - declarati...
If audience reaction is anything to go by, Kahchun Wong’s season-opening first concert officially in post as principal conductor of the Hallé was...
Coriolanus, Olivier/National Theatre review - ambitious stag...
The National’s new production of Coriolanus has to be one of the most handsome to appear on the Olivier stage. But it has...
Album: Ezra Collective - Dance, No One’s Watching
Ezra Collective were faced with a challenge. The quintet needed to follow up from their achievement in winning the Mercury Prize in 2023 with ...
Natalie Tenenbaum, Oslo Hackney review - shimmering hailstor...
Three years after Through the Noise’s first experimental “noisenight” at the Hoxton Underbelly, they are expanding into an international...
Album: Jaz Karis - Safe Flight
The enduring good health of UK soul – the fact that we are treated to a continual stream...
Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera review - the heart left cold
Emotional truth is elusive in Tchaikovsky’s “lyrical scenes” after Pushkin’s verse-novel. Overstress every feeling, as conductor Henrik Nánási did...
Here in America, Orange Tree Theatre review - Elia Kazan and...
The clue is in the title – not Then in America or Over There in America or even a more apposite, if more misleading,...
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review - Scarlatti miniatures ou...
If Angela Hewitt’s recital last night at the Wigmore...