tv
Line of Duty, Series 6, BBC One review - fasten your seatbelts, it's backMonday, 22 March 2021
Jed Mercurio’s tangly police corruption thriller Line of Duty has become one of the jewels in the BBC’s drama crown, and this sixth (and possibly last) series has finally arrived on BBC One after a steadily growing crescendo of pre-publicity. Can it live up to the hype? Read more...
|
My Father and Me, BBC Two review - Nick Broomfield's moving voyage around his familySunday, 21 March 2021
Nick Broomfield made his first film 50 years ago, and his career over those five decades (and some three dozen works) has been as distinctive, and distinguished as that of any British documentary maker. Read more... |
Drive to Survive, Season 3, Netflix review - the agony and the ecstasy of the 2020 F1 campaignSaturday, 20 March 2021
The 2020 Formula One season was all set to start in Australia last March when it was derailed by the Covid emergency. The F1 organisers insisted that they’d get the racing back on track somehow, and what sounded like foolhardy bravado was justified when they successfully staged a 17-race championship between July and December. Read more... |
The One, Netflix review - the downside of scientific matchmakingThursday, 18 March 2021
Readers of John Marrs’s 2017 novel The One should probably look away now, since Netflix’s dramatisation of the story bears scant resemblance to the book. Read more... |
Grace, ITV review - sun, sea and skulduggery in sunny BrightonMonday, 15 March 2021
We last saw John Simm on ITV in 2018’s Hong Kong-based murder mystery Strangers, a product from the Jack and Harry Williams script factory which wasted its exotic backdrops with a plot which mooched about in a dispirited fashion before dozing off entirely. Read more... |
Unforgotten, Series 4, ITV review - is the familiar formula wearing thin?Wednesday, 10 March 2021
There comes a time when every successful formula can do with an overhaul, and that particular bell may be tolling for Unforgotten (ITV). Read more... |
Deutschland 89, Channel 4 review - the Wall comes down, what next?Saturday, 06 March 2021
Joerg and Anna Winger’s gripping drama of East Germany, a loose portrait set over the final decade of that country’s existence, has reached its culmination, and this first episode of Deutschland 89 landed us right in the unpredictable maelstrom of history. Read more... |
The Terror, BBC Two review - nightmare in the Arctic wastesThursday, 04 March 2021
Admittedly, Antarctic explorer Captain Scott was at the other end of the earth from the protagonists of The Terror (BBC Two), but they would surely have concurred with his anguished observation: “Great God! This is an awful place.” Based on Dan Simmons’s novel, The Terror is a fictionalised account of the 1845 attempt by Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean. Read more... |
Your Honor, Sky Atlantic review - Bryan Cranston suffers fear and loathing in New OrleansWednesday, 03 March 2021
Nice to find Bryan Cranston taking the lead in a TV series again (this is his first since Breaking Bad ended in 2013), and the role of New Orleans judge Michael Desiato fits him like a well-tailored suit. Read more... |
Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry, Apple TV+ review - sprawling account of the singer's rise to superstardomSunday, 28 February 2021
The Billie Eilish story is a paradigm of pop music and marketing, 2020s-style. Eilish’s instinctive talent became evident when she was barely into her teens, and she flourished with the support of a close-knit and musical family. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
The Truth About Harry Beck, London Transport Museum Cubic Th...
Iconic is a word the meaning of which is moving from the religious world into popular culture - win a reality TV show dressed as a...
theartsdesk Q&A: young pianist Ignas Macknickas on appea...
The high level of entries for this year’s Leeds Piano Competition – 366, almost twice the...
Album: Miranda Lambert - Postcards From Texas
Miranda Lambert is one of those country stars who’s...
The law's sick voyeurism - director Cédric Kahn on...
The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of...
Zoë Coombs Marr, Soho Theatre review - stock checks and spre...
You have to admire the ambition of a show called Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life, the latest from Zoe Coombs Marr, which she...
The Lightest Element, Hampstead Theatre review - engrossing,...
British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993) and Michael Frayn’s ...
Resurgence, London City Ballet, Sadler’s Wells review - the...
You need to be fairly long in the tooth to feel nostalgia for the heyday of London City Ballet. The group was set up in 1978 by the late Harold...
Album: Jamie xx - In Waves
There’s been a lot of early 90s rave aesthetics in popular culture lately, but an awful lot of it has been at the level of signifiers. Fila,...
Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live Recordings
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half...
Album: The Waeve - City Lights
Real-life couple Graham Coxon and Rose-Elinor Dougall are both musicians of some profile in their own rights. The former, especially, for his work...