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Panorama: Forgotten Heroes, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 10 February 2011

Colonel Tim Collins (left) with former soldier Mark Morgan, on the streets of Brighton

A film apparently in support of British servicemen on BBC One? The Daily Mail will never believe this. Whatever, this was a bleak, unsparing investigation of the way veterans of our nation's various pointless and endless wars are dumped back into civilian life with scant regard for their mental health or physical wellbeing.

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Faulks on Fiction, BBC Two/ Birth of the British Novel, BBC Four

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 08 February 2011

London’s literary world must be as small as it was in the 18th century. Or at least that’s the impression you get when you watch book programmes on the BBC, for it’s the same old characters that keep cropping up.

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Afghan Cricket Club: Out of the Ashes, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Monday, 07 February 2011

At first sight, “Afghanistan cricket team” might be labled along with “The kosher guide to cooking pork” or “How to keep your promises, by N Clegg”. But in 2008, Taj Malik, an Afghan player passionate about the game, decided to try to take his national team into the world’s elite level and this film (part of the Storyville strand), by three young film-makers, Tim Albone, Leslie Knott and Lucy Martens, followed their efforts over two years.

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Hawaii Five-O, Sky1/ The Promise, Channel 4

Adam Sweeting Monday, 07 February 2011

They've remade everything else, so what took them so long to get around to Hawaii Five-0? Maybe the exotic Hawaiian locations of JJ Abrams's Lost helped to trigger flashbacks of Steve McGarrett & co, which would explain why Abrams's henchmen Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are co-producers of the new Five-0.

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Ronald Reagan: American Idol, BBC Four

Josh Spero Sunday, 06 February 2011

President Ronald Reagan looking stern - or is this just an act?

Aptly for a programme whose title invokes a show which is all style, no substance, the subject of Ronald Reagan: American Idol is image. What was Reagan really like? How much of his career as a Hollywood star did he carry into office? And why have certain images of Reagan endured? The first question, alas, is the one neither the film nor his biographers nor his family and friends have come close to answering.

Marchlands, ITV1

howard Male Friday, 04 February 2011

A young girl runs in slow motion through the woods, the cameraman in hot pursuit: this is only the opening seconds of ITV1’s new drama series, and already I was wondering to what degree this new five-parter was going to test my cliché tolerance level. But fortunately Marchlands pulled itself together and settled down to spend most of its first hour just letting us get to know the three families who had lived in the Marchlands house over the four previous decades.

The Big C, More4

Josh Spero Thursday, 03 February 2011

Probably the only person who would try and tackle cancer in a "humorous" way in Britain would be Frankie Boyle, and God knows he's not funny. No doubt we'd be treated to jokes about how unattractive women without hair are, or something equally enlightening.

Boardwalk Empire, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 03 February 2011

Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) loves Prohibition, but for all the wrong reasons

"We've got a product a fella's got to have," decreed Nucky Thompson, the County Treasurer in Atlantic City the day Prohibition came into force. "Better still, we've got a product he's not allowed to have."

Blue Bloods, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 02 February 2011

Bridget Moynahan as Assistant DA Erin Reagan-Boyle and Donnie Wahlberg as Detective Danny Reagan

If the jewel in Sky Atlantic's crown is the award-guzzling Boardwalk Empire, great things are also expected of its new cop-opera Blue Bloods, judging by the number of trailers spattering the Sky networks. It's the Dynasty of law enforcement, chronicling the relationships and travails of the Reagan family of New York.

Great White Silence with James Cracknell, Discovery

Jasper Rees Monday, 31 January 2011

For a while in the 1990s, the NASDAQ of polar exploration knocked Scott off his plinth and installed Shackleton as Britain’s favourite Antarctic hero. To a modern sensibility, survival seemed a more laudable pursuit than sacrifice. Better a live donkey, as Shackleton phlegmatically put it when turning home 90 miles from the South Pole, than a dead lion. For decades Scott has been comprehensively, even vindictively rubbished by the revisionist historian Roland Huntford.