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The King is Dead, BBC Three

Gerard Gilbert Friday, 03 September 2010

It's not that I feel like a middle-aged fuddy duddy exactly - although I was even almost too old for The Word and I'm clearly not the target audience for BBC Three. But if I were still in the 16-34 age group - even at its most juvenile end - frankly I’d be insulted by a show like The King is Dead. Is it a valid criticism of a BBC Three show to call it puerile?...

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Waterloo Road, BBC One

Veronica Lee Thursday, 02 September 2010

New viewers begin here: even if you know nothing of the previous five series of Waterloo Road, you could start to enjoy the drama set in a failing comprehensive in Greater Manchester with the opener to series six, as the writers have rather winningly taken the precaution of barely mentioning anything that went on in previous years - not even the teen suicide pact that ended series five.

The Tony Blair Interview with Andrew Marr, BBC Two: The Overnight Review

Fisun Güner Thursday, 02 September 2010

Tony Blair’s style of leadership was often mocked for being “presidential”, but last night it was Andrew Marr, in sober suit/ shocking orange tie combo, who gave off something of that self-assured “presidential” air. Standing outside No 10, Marr addressed the people in his smoothly measured, gently emphatic way.

The Tony Blair Interview with Andrew Marr, BBC Two: The Twitter Review

theartsdesk Wednesday, 01 September 2010

JasperRees Not long now till Tony Blair faces interrogation by A Marr. GraemeAThomson and I tweeting a live review

GraemeAThomson Nice to see they’ve scheduled it straight after Restoration Roadshow. Someone at the Beeb with a GSOH?

GraemeAThomson Marr's gone with the orange tie. Provocative

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I Am Slave, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Television seeks out the stories thrown up by real life. On the one hand there is the obsessive interest in the private lives of the great and good (and not so good) from Margot Fonteyn to Tony Blair. Other dramatists eagerly accept the responsibility to hold a mirror up to society in all its ills from the Ipswich murders to the travails of 19th-century lesbians. But the task that all writers have to face, whoever’s story is being told, is to make the narrative dramatic.

In Their Own Words: British Novelists, BBC Four

graeme Thomson Monday, 30 August 2010

“The empire writes back” was Salman Rushdie’s pithy summation of the process that changed British literature during the late Seventies and early Eighties, a shift epitomised by his novel Midnight’s Children winning the 1981 Booker prize. It wasn’t just the empire.

E Numbers: an Edible Adventure, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Friday, 27 August 2010

Food writer Stefan Gates seems to have spent his whole life in wilder regions, whether clambering naked up a rain-swept Giant’s Causeway (yes, that‘s the six-year-old Stefan, with his sister Samantha, on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1973 album Houses of the Holy), or eating sheep's testicles...

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I Can't Stop Stealing, BBC Three

Ismene Brown Friday, 27 August 2010

Britain has the worst shoplifting problem in Europe, so why can't TV take it seriously?

As a journalist with a sense of pride about what we reptiles can achieve, sometimes I shudder at the awfulness of what passes for journalism. The licence fee in theory confers on the BBC some moral purpose higher than that of the base commercial stations, doesn’t it? (Given that it implies Commercial = Bad, Public Service = Good.) So a BBC Three documentary on shoplifting should probably be an example of higher journalism? Maybe something that rams home deeper truths either about the...

My New Brain, Channel 4

Fisun Güner Thursday, 26 August 2010

Having sustained a traumatic head injury Simon Hales learns to get acquainted with his new brain

When Simon Hales, a 20-year-old university student, fell from a 20ft wall during a tipsy night out, nobody knew whether he would pull through. He'd suffered a horrific brain injury and would spend the next five weeks in a coma. Luckily, he did pull through, though nobody could recognise the newly awakened Simon from the old Simon. His mother told us that her son "evidently wasn’t Simon”. She loved him, she said, but “what I'm looking for is the son that I had to come back".

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Big Brother, Channel 4

howard Male Tuesday, 24 August 2010

The eye had it, and will be sadly missed by our unapologetic critic

There is a lot of talk about the contestants' experience of Big Brother but little about the viewer’s experience. During its decade on air there was a drop-off of both the red tops' shock-horror coverage and the intellectualised justifications put forward by the quality press, and inevitably this resulted in viewing figures also declining with each passing year. But I confess I remained an avid viewer. It’s not what you watch, it’s how you watch it, I would say to baffled friends to...