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Rostropovich: The Genius of the Cello, BBC FourSaturday, 08 October 2011
How can even a generously proportioned documentary do justice to one of the musical world’s greatest life forces? John Bridcut knows what to do: make sure all your interviewees have a close personal association with your chosen giant in one of his many spheres of influence, then get cellist-disciples from Rostropovich’s Class 19 in the Moscow Conservatoire – here Moray Welsh, Natalia Gutman, Karine Georgian and Elizabeth Wilson - to watch and listen to their mentor talking and playing. Read more...
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Hidden, BBC OneFriday, 07 October 2011
One has learned to approach high-profile BBC dramas with mild apprehension, since apparent promise and oodles of hype frequently turn out to be fig leaves for feeble plotting and a half-baked script (The Hour, this means you. And possibly you too, The Shadow Line). Too many recent series should have "promising idea, pitifully executed" chiselled into their neglected, overgrown headstones. Read more... |
House, Season 8, Sky1Friday, 07 October 2011
Since he hit the ground limping, seven years back, diagnostic genius Gregory House, MD, has been shot, drugged, trapped under a collapsing building, exposed to deadly viruses (his own doing), prosecuted, fired, committed to a psychiatric unit, and generally killed off and resurrected in many and variously cunning ways. Read more... |
Transplant, BBC OneWednesday, 05 October 2011
Sixty-five-year-old Penny was exceptional. Unfortunately, just how exceptional was revealed after her death from a brain haemorrhage. In life, she was in the minority of people - 29 per cent - who have placed themselves on the Organ Donor Register. Transplant was a sobering, measured examination of what happened to her organs after death. All participants had waived their right to anonymity. Read more... |
Terra Nova, Sky1Tuesday, 04 October 2011
Is it back from the future or forward to the past? We start in the year 2149, and Earth is overcrowded, polluted and staggering towards extinction. Nobody can breathe outdoors without using a rebreather mask, and most plant and animal life has withered away. Near-derelict tower blocks rot in the sickly ginger twilight, like out-takes from Blade Runner. Read more... |
Shirley, BBC TwoFriday, 30 September 2011
A couple of series ago Alan Yentob took himself off to Monte Carlo to grill Dame Shirley Bassey for Imagine about her life in showbiz. Kissinger got more out of Gromyko at the height of the Cold War. (The Soviet foreign minister’s nickname was Nyet.) The BBC have had another stab at showing what makes the girl from Tiger Bay tick, this time in the form of drama, where there is licence to make things up. Read more... |
Time Shift: Dear Censor, BBC FourFriday, 30 September 2011
I hadn't thought this one through very well. As someone who was put off horror films by a window crashing onto a hand in one of the Amityville movies at least two decades ago, watching Time Shift: Dear Censor last night, which promised to show some of cinema's most notorious scenes, was probably unwise. Happily, standards of gore, violence and sex have dropped so fast in the past 20 years that what was censorable in 1991 is PG now. Read more... |
Rex Appeal, BBC FourThursday, 29 September 2011
Dinosaurs. Even just seeing that word takes me back to a letter my seven-year-old self wrote to Blue Peter humbly begging them for “More dinosaws pleez”. Back then, a sighting of these lumbering beasts on TV or at the movies was a rare and thrilling thing. But ever since Jurassic Park (and the fact they can be conjured up with relative CGI ease) we’ve been overrun by the things. Read more... |
Cinema Verite, Sky AtlanticWednesday, 28 September 2011
The 1973 series An American Family is often referred to as television's first reality show, though comparing it to Big Brother or the Kardashians would be like slotting Ingmar Bergman alongside the CBeebies. Its 12 episodes were boiled down from 300-odd hours of observational footage of the Loud family, of Santa Barbara, California, at work, rest and play. Read more... |
This is Jinsy, Sky AtlanticTuesday, 27 September 2011
Excepting the cows, Guernsey’s most famous resident was probably Oliver Reed, who lived there as a tax exile. The barmy This is Jinsy, the creation of Guernsey natives Chris Bran and Justin Chubb, probably isn’t a faithful depiction of the island’s life, but it’s got to be its most notable cultural export. If not that, then its most curious. Read more... |
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