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The Culture Show: Vicky Featherstone - All Change at the Royal Court, BBC TwoThursday, 28 November 2013
I guess the BBC can't afford researchers or fact-checkers these days. If they could, perhaps something of substance might have arisen from their vacuous Culture Show profile of Vicky Featherstone, the gifted new artistic director of the Royal Court. Oh, and they have might have got the theatre's actual postcode right (SW1W 8AS, as per the Court website), rather than insisting twice on air that it's in (neighbouring) SW3. Read more... |
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, BBC OneSunday, 24 November 2013
Well, wasn't that fantastic? Three Doctors; guest appearances from just about every fan favourite you could think of and enough in-jokes to satisfy even the most committed Whovian. Plus, anybody whose interests incorporate the musical career of one John Barrowman certainly wouldn’t have been disappointed. I’m talking, of course, about The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a half-hour Red Button special written and directed... Read more... |
An Adventure in Space and Time, BBC TwoFriday, 22 November 2013
Of all the ways in which the BBC has chosen to mark the 50th anniversary of one of its most celebrated exports, surely this (other than the obvious) was the most anticipated: a feature-length retelling of the origin story of Doctor Who, written and executive produced by some of the same names behind the show’s current run. Read more... |
Last Tango in Halifax, Series Two, BBC OneWednesday, 20 November 2013
No one seemed quite sure whether it’s a journey of 60 miles or 40 from Harrogate to Halifax, but we’re going to be seeing a lot of the M62 in this second series of Last Tango in Halifax. Read more... |
The Sound of Musicals, Channel 4Wednesday, 20 November 2013
No one ever said putting on a show was easy, least of all the names (a lot of them famous, quite a few not) on compulsively watchable view in The Sound of Musicals. Read more... |
The Spy Who Went Into the Cold, BBC FourTuesday, 19 November 2013
How much time does anyone want to spend in the company of Kim Philby? BBC Four’s Storyville allotted him 75 minutes, which isn’t much to tell the story of a third man with two paymasters and four wives. And yet this portrait somehow contrived to outstay its welcome. This is not to come over all huffy Heffer about betrayal. It’s just that hunting for the real Philby is like wandering around a maze uncertain if you’re looking for the entrance or the exit. Read more... |
Borgen, Series 3, BBC FourSunday, 17 November 2013
Sidse Babett Knudsen, alias the absurdly photogenic Danish Statsminister Birgitte Nyborg, provoked gasps at the Nordicana festival in London last June when she revealed that she was no longer Prime Minister in series three. And indeed, as the curtain rose on episode one, we could see that she was not. Read more... |
The Science of Doctor Who, BBC TwoFriday, 15 November 2013
Today’s special preview of the impending 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who finally filled in some of what happened in the gap between Paul McGann’s 1996 made-for-TV movie and the show’s 2005 televisual regeneration (Big Finish audios notwithstanding, obviously). So it was appropriate that today’s other Who-related event, a one-off tie-in documentary fronted by Professor Brian Cox, began by doing its best to bridge the gap between its presenter’s time... Read more... |
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, ITVThursday, 14 November 2013
Inevitably, an aura of fin-de-siècle gloom hung heavily over this final Poirot. So daunting was the prospect of terminating his 25-year career-defining stint as Belgium's finest (albeit imaginary) export that David Suchet insisted on shooting the last one before the others in the concluding series. Read more... |
Strange Days - Cold War Britain, BBC TwoWednesday, 13 November 2013
The images really do say it all in Strange Days – Cold War Britain. It’s a style of documentary making which puts archive material in first place, ahead even of presenter Dominic Sandbrook, who’s the sole screen presence here (no interviews, no talking heads). We can only wonder exactly how this challenging mêlée of material came together, but can be sure that archive producer Stuart Robertson had every bit as much input as director Rebecca Templar. Read more... |
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