tv
The Man Who Collected the World: William Burrell, BBC FourThursday, 22 August 2013
Had the wealthy William Burrell had a son, Glasgow might not have acquired the world-class art collection that the shipping entrepreneur amassed during his long life. But with the birth of a sole daughter came both ambitions and suspicion – he raised Marion to succeed to his art empire, then imagined every suitor to be a gold-digger, breaking off her third engagement with a public announcement in the newspaper that took even her by surprise. Read more... |
Top Boy, Series 2, Channel 4Wednesday, 21 August 2013
After the almost complete absence of the police from the first series of Top Boy, the sirens are blazing as the follow-on to Ronan Bennett’s tough drug-dealing drama kicks in. Specifically, they’re exhuming the corpse of Kamale, who fell victim to Dushane’s ascendance to the position of Top Boy in the East London estate of Summerhouse. What’s left of Kamale a year on is no pretty sight, even though the scene’s got some spectacular background illumination from the O2 stadium. Read more... |
The Great British Bake Off 2013, BBC TwoWednesday, 21 August 2013
Amongst my friends, I am known as an admirer of the baked good in just about all of its forms: the loaf, the sponge, the ubiquitous cupcake. And yet something about The Great British Bake Off has always put me off. The relentless commercialisation of certain stereotypes of post-war frugality, typically practised by female heads of house, over the past few years has left a progressively nastier taste in my mouth as national austerity has hit harder.... Read more... |
Southcliffe, Series Finale, Channel 4Monday, 19 August 2013
The shipping forecast is never going to sound the same again after Southcliffe. Each time it came back over the four episodes of Tony Grisoni’s drama, set against a background of the limpid dawn sky of marshland Faversham, which stood in for the drama’s fictional market town, we knew that Stephen Morton (Sean Harris) was about to embark on his shooting spree. Terror came out of nowhere. Read more... |
Top of the Lake, Series Finale, BBC TwoSunday, 18 August 2013
“Everything you think you are, you’re not,” pronounced Holly Hunter’s inscrutable GJ in the final episode of the chilly Top of the Lake. Certainties crumbled as the series progressed, with Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin discovering that almost everyone in the remote New Zealand town of Laketop had something they would prefer to hide. Read more... |
Big School, BBC OneSaturday, 17 August 2013
Boldly not going anywhere near things like Grange Hill or Teachers, Big School is more like a throwback to the St Trinian's of the 1950s. Co-writer and star David Walliams plays a man known only as Mr Church, Deputy Head of Chemistry at Greybridge School (the nod to Billy Bunter's Greyfriars presumably being the whole point). Read more... |
Crazy About One Direction, Channel 4Friday, 16 August 2013
Sandra, 14, has worked out what it will be like if she marries One Direction’s Harry Styles. “His morning voice would be amazing,” she says, thinking forward to when the first thing she hears each day is the croak with which he greets the morning and her. Pop groups with fans are nothing new, and with them come ranks of the obsessive. Read more... |
Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain, BBC FourTuesday, 13 August 2013
Blame the weather: it works every time. In 1858, the long hot summer thwarted the building of an 11-mile glass-covered network of roads and railways that would have linked all existing London stations, crossed the river in three places and, it was believed by its architect Joseph Paxton, relieved the congestion that was making crossing the capital an anxious business. Read more... |
Cocaine Capital of the World: Stacey Dooley Investigates, BBC ThreeTuesday, 13 August 2013
Stacey Dooley is a chirpy media personality from Luton who first created TV ripples in 2008 on a BBC Three show called Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts. She made an impression then as a high street fashion fan who bridled at the Third World labour involved in much cheap garment production. Read more... |
Dragons' Den, Series 11, BBC TwoMonday, 12 August 2013
Two new dragons have joined the Dragons’ Den, and it may be even scarier for them than it is for the entrepreneurs. How can pale, uppercrust, celebrity hotel designer Kelly Hoppen possibly match up to our ‘ilary, the trucking queen with the Buzz Lightyear shoulder-pads and the bass-baritone snarl? And how can a faceless cloud-computing bloke supplant Theo, the affable little emperor of high-street bras and waspies? Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages...
