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Imagine: The Fatwa - Salman's Story, BBC OneThursday, 20 September 2012
There’s nothing like having a fatwa hanging over you to find out who your friends are, for those who might be taken for natural allies may surprise you. And so it was when Salman Rushdie received his death warrant 23 years ago on St Valentine’s Day: there were those who proved their mettle, or at least found common cause with the imperilled writer. Read more... |
Downton Abbey, Series 3, ITV1Monday, 17 September 2012
Mid-September: the nights are drawing in and, to quote that well-known costume dramatist John Milton, the period detail is as “thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa”. Downton – praise be! – is back. However, before the third series even gets into its penguin-suited stride it seems that paradise is about to be lost all over again. Lord Grantham has blown most of his wife’s fortune: the Canadian Trunk Line Company has hit the buffers and gone bust. Read more... |
Comedy World Cup, Channel 4Sunday, 16 September 2012
Now here's a thing. Why would you invite one of his generation's most acclaimed classical actors, who is also a huge star of popular culture, to make his debut as a light entertainer in that most clichéd role, a quiz-show host? Read more... |
The Audience, Channel 4Friday, 14 September 2012
Don’t say this hasn’t been on the way for a while. For years now we’ve had the public working on television for free. They sing for free. They juggle and ventriloquise and suck up to Simon Cowell for free. They even live in glass houses for free. Meanwhile, back at home, the audience makes the key decisions about who stays and who goes. Read more... |
Lilyhammer, BBC FourWednesday, 12 September 2012
Despite Lilyhammer’s sub-zero, snow white Norwegian setting, it is initially difficult to divorce Frank Tagliano from The Sopranos’ Silvio Dante. They’re both played by Steven Van Zandt and both are Mafia men. The suit they wear is the same. Yet Lilyhammer is not The Sopranos in Norway and, by plonking this stereotype into the most unlikely of locations, Van Zandt reveals a flair for nuance formerly obscured by the shadows of others. Read more... |
The Scapegoat, ITV1Monday, 10 September 2012
The small screen has always been as much a mirror as a window into other worlds. Even when the picture-box is switched off it reflects the viewer. If light is both particle and wave, glass is both solid and liquid. It shows things and hides things. Now you see it, now you don’t. Read more... |
The Thick of It, Series Four, BBC TwoSunday, 09 September 2012
What tremendous sacrifice did Armando Iannucci lay before the comedy Gods in order to be offered the gift of the coalition? Labour post-Blair singularly failed to provide rich pickings for political satire; Gordon Brown and his hangdog posse were too obviously doomed for anyone to bother really sinking their teeth into. In the three years since the last series, however, democracy has served up the omnishambles to end all omnishambles. Read more... |
Dallas, Channel 5Thursday, 06 September 2012
Praise be, they’ve kept the title sequence. Read more... |
Unforgettable: The Sweeney, ITV1Wednesday, 05 September 2012
Sometimes when we reconnect with the television of our childhood it seems very different from what we recall, usually lesser in some way. This is certainly not the case with the physical violence of The Sweeney. ITV's hour-long special, to coincide with the release of a new feature film, showcased a mass of beatings, snarling assaults, and men taking limb-breaking leaps into quarries rather than face the actors who went on to play Inspector Morse and Minder. Read more... |
A Mother's Son, ITV1Tuesday, 04 September 2012
We have been here before: The Killing wasn’t the first crime drama to open with a damsel in distress. This time it’s a schoolgirl who is being chased across the sand dunes at night. She has been stabbed. She falls – conveniently backwards – to the ground. The pursuer is reflected in the dying pupil’s dilated pupil. “I’m sorry,” whispers the girl. Why? Read more... |
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