fri 29/03/2024

tv

The Story of Musicals, BBC Four

Kieron Tyler

As the series ended, it remained at great pains to repeatedly point out that this was the story of the British musical, its post-War success and how Oliver and Jesus Christ Superstar conquered Broadway. Yet it was hard not to sigh as episode three finished with Disney and Sir Cameron Mackintosh cosying up to stage Mary Poppins, which Mackintosh had the rights to. Universal hit Britain’s stages with Wicked, as DreamWorks has with Shrek The Musical...

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The One Griff Rhys Jones, BBC One

Jasper Rees

What’s the opposite of a pilot? Griff Rhys Jones has not performed in a comedic capacity for nearly a decade and a half. When he did, he was always part of a larger company – first Not the Nine O’Clock News, then for 14 years in a partnership with Mel Smith. There must be a reason why he never struck out on his own.

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Sherlock, Series 2 Finale, BBC One

Adam Sweeting

And so we reached the end of series two with The Reichenbach Fall, the last of a miserly three episodes.

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A Secret History: The Grammar School, BBC Four

Fisun Güner

This two-part documentary, which ended last night with teary recollections from a handful of well-known faces, wasn’t really a “secret history”. The history of grammar schools and their wholesale demolition by a Labour government is pretty widely known. But even that was fairly lightly skipped over. No, this was really a love letter, written to a long dead mistress who had served the writer well.

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The Good Wife, More4

Veronica Lee

Much has been made of the quality of drama currently or recently on British television - Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Cranford, any number of Dickens adaptations we are about to see during 2012 - and rightly so. But as The Good Wife starts its third season on More4, it's worth noting that when it comes to modern-day serials, the Americans are more than a match for British bonnets and book adaptations.

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Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport, BBC One

Adam Sweeting

The recent suicide of Wales's football manager Gary Speed prompted angstful outpourings about the hidden menace of depression in top-level sport, even though there was no evidence that Speed was a sufferer. But depression clearly is an occupational hazard among sportsmen, with cricket incurring a disturbingly high rate of player suicides, and in this film former England superstar Freddie Flintoff (real name Andrew) probed into some high-profile case histories.

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood, BBC Two

Josh Spero

You can never have enough Dickens, doctors say. Or is it exercise? Either way, the BBC has gone to town on the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth as if the moths are eating away in the Victorian closet and all the costumes need to be used as much as possible.

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Above Suspicion: Silent Scream, ITV1

Jasper Rees

Since Prime Suspect introduced television viewers to the writing of Lynda La Plante, the concept of event television has lost a little of its lustre. Such was the remarkable heft of La Plante’s storyline about a serial killer and Helen Mirren’s performance as DI Jane Tennison that schedulers have ever since been sending out their pedigree crime dramas in great big lumpy chunks. Twenty years on, La Plante doesn’t quite kick down the door the way she used to.

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Borgen, BBC Four

Kieron Tyler

Knitwear fetishists won’t be as thrilled with Borgen as they were with The Killing, but based on the first two episodes of the Danish political drama, Birgitte Nyborg Christensen is a match for Sarah Lund. She’s as likely to stray from what she ought to be doing as Lund and just as adept as spotting what no else can see.

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New Girl, Channel 4

Veronica Lee

Since the departure of Friends and Frasier from our screens, fans of the genre have been waiting for the next generation of mates-based US sitcoms.

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