tv
Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture, BBC TwoSaturday, 25 February 2012
The Lord count was perhaps surprisingly high in the first instalment of Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture. Among the talking heads I counted there was only one who wasn’t a life peer or a “proper” hereditary one, and there was only one who was neither Lord, Lady or Dame (though she did have a CBE). Read more...
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Gerry Rafferty: Right Down the Line, BBC FourSaturday, 25 February 2012
“Baker Street” and “Stuck in the Middle With You” will live forever. Once heard, each is never forgotten. Both are perfect. Both were written and sung by Gerry Rafferty, the subject of Right Down the Line, an affectionate David Tennant-narrated tribute to this stubborn Scotsman, who died in January last year. The story was told with warmth and his songwriting celebrated, but evidence for Rafferty’s troubled nature was never far. Read more... |
Kidnap and Ransom, Series 2, ITV1Friday, 24 February 2012
Can any drama work in which half the dialogue takes place by cellphone? Last night a new dose of Kidnap and Ransom gave this thorny question a thorough workout. Trevor Eve, bestubbled, gravelly and never very comedic, is back doing his Trevor Eve thing as Dominic King, a primetime hostage negotiator who never seems to have problems with his mobile battery. Clearly not an iPhone man. Read more... |
Watson & Oliver, BBC TwoTuesday, 21 February 2012
Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver, purely by dint of being female, have a burden of expectation before they even open their mouths, as the ghosts of French and Saunders stalk the corridors of the BBC. It's horribly unfair to saddle the newcomers with that burden of course, but, given the dearth of female comics on television, it's perhaps inevitable. Read more... |
Homeland, Channel 4Monday, 20 February 2012
While Homeland is hardly unique in being a TV series born in the shadow of 9/11, it may prove to be one of the most resonant and troubling responses to that ghastly event and its aftermath. Sergeant Nick Brody, who went missing with a fellow Marine sniper in Iraq in 2003, is found alive by a Special Forces team raiding a safe house used by notorious terrorist Abu Nazir. Read more... |
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... |
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... |
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