tv
Harlots, Housewives and Heroines, BBC FourWednesday, 23 May 2012
Ooh look, she’s at it again. Fresh from hurling insults at David Starkey (well, he started it) and provoking the ire of historian Alison Light - who presumably didn’t make it through BBC casting - for daring to try on a bonnet on the box and thus “cheapening history”, Dr Lucy Worsley is back on our screens, doing ninja kicks in Puritan dress, trying Restoration gowns for size and shamelessly discussing Samuel Pepys’s “emissions”. Read more... |
The Bridge: Series Finale, BBC FourSunday, 20 May 2012
It ended where it began, between Copenhagen and Malmö along the Öresund bridge. The journey back to square one took in issues of homelessness, mental health, immigration and child labour. Drug abuse, national identity, family break-up and the power of the media cropped up too. But none of these are what The Bridge hinged on. Read more... |
Tales of Television Centre, BBC FourThursday, 17 May 2012
“It’s like Big Ben. It’s like the Houses of Parliament. It’s like St Paul’s,” observed Susan Hampshire, reflecting on the iconic properties of Television Centre, the BBC’s 52-year-old nerve centre. Steady on, Susan, you thought, let’s not overdo it. Read more... |
Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest, BBC TwoThursday, 17 May 2012
It's a truism of modern television that a programme rarely gets made without a celebrity being attached, but in this case there was a very good reason for Felicity Kendal being on board. Her parents, Laura and Geoffrey Kendal, founded Shakespeareana, a travelling theatre troupe that performed Shakespeare in India in the postwar decades; many will know their story from Merchant Ivory's 1965 film about the company, Shakespeare Wallah. Read more... |
Silk, Series Two, BBC OneWednesday, 16 May 2012
How delightful to welcome the return of Peter Moffat's skilful legal series. Read more... |
56 Up, ITV1Tuesday, 15 May 2012
For most of us, life is what happens to you when you’re looking the other way. For the participants in 7 Up it’s what happens in seven-year segments between the visits of Michael Apted. First interviewed in 1964, they are all 56 now, and as usual the questions loom. Who is still turning up for these things? Who has thrown in the towel or, as will now become a more urgent issue, has anyone shuffled off their mortal coil? Read more... |
Episodes, Series 2, BBC TwoSaturday, 12 May 2012
There have been some highly unlikely couplings in the long history of television comedy, but the one between Debbie from The Archers and Joey from Friends in the first series of Episodes ranked somewhere near the top of the list. If the viewers struggled to be convinced by that oddly implausible tryst, at least we weren’t alone. Read more... |
Street of Dreams, Manchester ArenaFriday, 11 May 2012
Street of dreams? The people who lived in the real-life inspiration and location for Coronation Street, Archie Street in Salford, hand-picked by the soap’s begetter Tony Warren, would be flummoxed and flabbergasted to hear it called that. I walked down Archie Street several times when the TV soap started. The two-up, two down, back-to-back terraced houses, separated by a three-foot alleyway, had no baths, no hot water, no inside lavatories and were dubbed “a disgrace to society”. Read more... |
Prisoners of War, Sky Arts 1Friday, 11 May 2012
This is, as you may have heard, the Israeli TV series which provided the inspiration for Homeland, smartly snapped up by Sky Arts to plug the gap left by the latter after last weekend's finale. And guess what - it may be even better than its Hollywood spin-off. Read more... |
Sporting Heroes: After the Final Whistle, BBC OneThursday, 10 May 2012
It’s a funny old game. Sport rewards the talented when they are young and their bodies responsive. A profession which requires the reflexes to work in instant harmony with the brain means that beyond a certain age, the gifted become instantly unemployable the moment they lose their magic powers. A case of they don’t think it’s all over: it is now. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Album: Sally Shapiro - Ready to Live a Lie
Ready to Live a Lie is so sonically vaporous it almost isn’t there. While the album’s 11 tracks draw from continental European musical...
Il Trittico, Opéra de Paris review - reordered Puccini works...
So here in Paris, as at Salzburg in 2022, it’s no longer “Puccini’s Trittico” but “the Asmik Grigorian Trittico”. Which would be...
When the Light Breaks review - only lovers left alive
Grief takes unexpected turns over the course of a long Icelandic...
Marwood, Crabb, Wigmore Hall review - tangos, laments and an...
James Crabb is a musical magician, taking the ever-unfashionable accordion into new and unlikely places, through bespoke arrangements of a...
Blu-ray: Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA
DEFA was East Germany’s state film studio, operating...
Dennis, RSNO, Dunedin Consort, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinb...
"How long is Wagner’s Ring Cycle?" That’s not the opening to a joke, it’s a genuine question asked by a friend who I’d met up with before heading...
Dara Ó Briain, Soho Theatre Walthamstow review - master stor...
Dara Ó Briain’s has described his previous show So… Where Were We? – in which he describes his search for his birth...
Album: Anna Lapwood - Firedove
This album Firedove (Sony Classical), surely, has to be seen as part of a bigger story: that of organist, choir director and...