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Upstairs Downstairs, Series Two, BBC OneMonday, 20 February 2012
You remember Upstairs Downstairs – the lavish 2010 period drama-cum-soap based around servants and their masters that had the misfortune of not being named Downton Abbey. Making its entrance some three months after ITV’s series despite being filmed first, Upstairs played like the indignant, overshadowed elder sibling to Downton’s effervescent, effortlessly successful young upstart. Read more...
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Lucian Freud: Painted Life, BBC TwoSunday, 19 February 2012
He was uncompromising, honest, personal. He didn't like doing what he was told. He never followed fashion. Is this an accurate picture of Lucian Freud, or is it a description of almost every great artist who ever lived? The intensely banal voiceover for Lucian Freud: Painted Life on BBC Two which contained these insights (at least in the rough cut I viewed) made it seem like a painter out on his own, stringent in his artistic pursuit, was something we had never seen before. Read more... |
Wonderland: A Dad Is Born, BBC TwoFriday, 17 February 2012
Is there anything new to say about becoming a parent? Not really. But about 20 years ago it certainly looked that way. It was around the time feminism had gone mainstream, and also when newspapers began swelling in size and needed extra content, so columnists started writing a great deal about motherhood. They reported from the frontline of epidurals and breastfeeding as if it was breaking news, as if they were the first generation ever actually to give birth. Read more... |
Lowdown, BBC FourThursday, 16 February 2012
The most finely judged thing about Lowdown on BBC Four is how it takes the tradition of broad Australian humour and makes it broad enough to cover the Outback without causing a breach in laughter or taste. The taste in this comedy of hacks is, of course, bad, but that's what makes it so good. The bogan element in Australian culture - it's their equivalent of the hick - is turned into the comedy of the unspeakable, and is always very, very funny. Read more... |
Jo Brand on Kissing, BBC FourWednesday, 15 February 2012
We know any old nonsense goes on Valentine's Day, but as it dragged itself towards the end of its allotted hour, Jo Brand's search for the meaning of kissing was being drowned out by a cacophonous din of barrels being scraped. Considering Brand's implacable hostility towards seeing people kissing - "There's far too much kissing going on these days, especially in public" was her opening salvo - it's amazing she wanted to make the programme at all. Read more... |
Storyville - If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, BBC FourTuesday, 14 February 2012
Daniel McGowan is a convicted terrorist. As a former leading member of the Earth Liberation Front, listed as the FBI’s number one domestic terrorist organisation, the thirtysomething New Yorker with a gentle, rather guileless demeanour was convicted in 2007 on multiple counts of arson and conspiracy. No one was killed during these attacks and no one has ever been killed or physically injured in the course of any ELF action. Read more... |
Bullets, Boots and Bandages, BBC FourFriday, 10 February 2012
Watching Bullets, Boots and Bandages last night, I found myself recalling a tutor from my Master’s year whose favourite hobby was lampooning the “sloppy thinking” of other noted academics. Read more... |
Roger and Val Have Just Got In, BBC TwoThursday, 09 February 2012
It's a brave sitcom writer who dares to write a bleakly comic drama, without canned laughter, in which nothing very much happens and where a long-married couple natter away about the mundane details of their lives in the half-hour after they come home from work. But twin sisters Emma and Beth Kilcoyne have done just that, and the result, Roger and Val Have Just Got In, is a thing of quiet beauty. Read more... |
Super Smart Animals, BBC OneThursday, 09 February 2012
We humans think we’re the bee’s knees don’t we? We’ve got language, music, art, cars, fridges, bank accounts. Essentially we’ve left all of the other planet’s creatures faltering on the starting line. Read more... |
Prisoners' Wives, BBC OneWednesday, 08 February 2012
Prisoners’ Wives belongs in a hoary tradition of television drama which finds women doing it for themselves. The men are always otherwise engaged, being either dead or useless or, in the case of Prisoners’ Wives, as it implies on the tin. In the old days such dramas were usually written by one of Lucy Gannon or Lynda La Plante or Kay Mellor, but here the broad brushstrokes are applied by Julie Gearey. Read more... |
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