tv
Dive, BBC TwoFriday, 09 July 2010
Dominic Savage’s new two-part film, part of BBC Two’s renewed commitment to intelligent and challenging drama (we shall see; fewer biopics please), comes billed as a look at modern teenage life, although it seemed more drawn to long silences - or the sound of the wind in the trees - and the seemingly desolate land and seascapes of the Lincolnshire coast. Your eyes kept being drawn to the edge of the screen, away from the young protagonists, Lindsey and Robert, which I suppose was meant to... Read more... |
Tim Marlow Meets Terry Jones, Sky ArtsThursday, 08 July 2010
He may be a writer, a director, an actor, a historian, and, of course, a former member of Monty Python, yet rather than being a Renaissance man, Terry Jones is clearly a mediaevalist at heart. We know this not only because he has written well-received books on Chaucer and medieval history, but an amiable half hour spent in his company at the National Gallery shows us just where his sensibilities lie. He was the first guest in a series inviting celebs to talk about their favourite artworks and... Read more... |
Imagine: Tom Jones - What Good Am I? BBC OneWednesday, 07 July 2010
The voice, being 70, isn’t quite the untamed beast of yore. But it retains a certain feral throb. Alan Yentob stands across the recording studio, listening donnishly as Tom Jones belts one out. “You still feel the presence and power,” he reports. Not that you’d know from the way Yentob sways ever so imperceptibly in his BBC execuspecs. Yentobs don’t dance. Go on, man, do the done thing. Whip off your drawers and lob them lovingly at the Pontypridd Pelvis. Read more... |
Identity, ITV1Monday, 05 July 2010
Another new cop show? How marvellous! I feared the worst, hearing that this one was about a special unit set up by DSI Martha Lawson (Keeley Hawes) to combat the ever-growing threat of identity theft. It sounded rather po-faced and bureaucratic, frankly, but I’m pleased to report that it hasn’t turned out badly at all. Read more... |
Storyville: Leaving the Cult, BBC FourMonday, 05 July 2010
Joe, Sam and Bruce may be three callow teenagers from southern Utah but they’re still smart enough to realise that the only world they have ever known is wrong, deeply wrong. So wrong, in fact, that they make the hardest decision of their lives by leaving their family, friends and community behind forever, as this is the only way to escape the madness. Read more... |
Singing for Life, BBC Four/ Gazza's Tears, ITV1Monday, 05 July 2010
I once sat in a rehearsal room in a brick-box theatre on the outskirts of Cape Town. The cast was warming up for Carmen. First, the choreographer put 40 mostly black South African singers through a gruelling physical warm-up. Opera singers are rarely slender, and they were all in a muck sweat by the time the vocal coach stepped forward to lead them through a vocal warm-up. But when they opened their mouths it was as if someone has strapped you to a chair in a wind tunnel. The... Read more... |
Forever Young, BBC FourFriday, 02 July 2010
Appropriately enough, Forever Young began with the primal beat of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life". What I consider to be Mr Pop’s “My Way” seems to perfectly sum up the pumped-up and apparently unstoppable forward momentum of the man himself and his against-all-the-odds lengthy career. But it could just as easily represent many of the world-weary yet resilient musicians interviewed in this unexceptional but nevertheless diverting documentary. |
Southland, More4Thursday, 01 July 2010
The world isn’t exactly sending up distress flares urgently demanding more cop shows, but this new effort from ER’s producer John Wells proves that the genre can still be cranked into life if the writing is strong and the performances feel authentic. Catching the precise tone is always critical, and evidently some pushing and shoving went on about exactly where Southland should be pitched. Read more... |
Reunited, BBC OneWednesday, 30 June 2010
It occurred to me halfway through Reunited that you could map the characters of This Life – the epochal house-share drama of the Nineties – on to those featured in Mike Bullen’s one-hour pilot feature and see little change in the terrain. Read more... |
Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain, Channel 4Tuesday, 29 June 2010
The part played by Polish fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain has hardly gone undocumented, and the Hun-zapping exploits of the Polish 303 Squadron will be familiar to anyone with a historical interest in the subject, so you’d have to say that calling this film The Untold Battle of Britain was a wee bit of an exaggeration. Read more... |
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