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Who Needs Fathers?, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Thursday, 01 April 2010

Take two sets of separated parents and observe their opposing response to sharing the children. Colin and Alison haven’t involved lawyers, and divide childcare equally and amicably. Sandy, on the other hand, has spent tens of thousands of pounds on legal fees in order secure access to his four children with Rose, a woman who was so inured to being dragged through the family courts by her ex-husband that not until fairly late on in the quietly excellent Who Needs Fathers? did she...

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Paul Merton's Weird and Wonderful World of Early Cinema, BBC Four

Jasper Rees Monday, 29 March 2010

The first cinema was two-thirds empty. A hundred seats had been laid out by the Lumière brothers in a Parisian salon, but only 33 of them were occupied. The small audience saw a film in which a crowd, mostly women in long dresses but also a large bounding dog, pour through a tall gate. None of them looks at the camera, as we would now. In 1895, stardom was not yet associated with film. The dog, as dogs will, gave much the most attention-seeking performance.

Over the Rainbow, BBC One

graeme Thomson Friday, 26 March 2010

Girls on the Frontline, BBC Three/ News at Ten, BBC One

Jasper Rees Friday, 26 March 2010

Let’s be honest, you never expect much sense from BBC Three. You don’t count on it for, say, depth of perspective. The channel which each week spews fresh torrents of hectic DayGlo entertainment in the specific direction of a desensitised demographic tends to steer clear of the big subjects. War and such. Girls on the Frontline, therefore, did not inspire much hope. That title. On any other BBC channel, it would have been women, not girls.

Fat Man in a White Hat, BBC Four

Gerard Gilbert Wednesday, 24 March 2010

Fat Man in a White Hat: Bill Buford poses with Bob the baker.

Sophie Dahl made her debut as a TV chef last night in The Delicious Miss Dahl (try and imagine Leslie Phillips saying that), a BBC Two confection even more absurdly artificial than the various Nigella Lawson food-porn shows. At least you believe Nigella can and does make food and eat it - with Dahl (despite two cookbooks to her name) it just came across like another modelling job. And while the saucer-eyed beauty may be easier on the eye than Bill Buford, there was only one destination...

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Seven Ages of Britain, BBC One

Jasper Rees Monday, 22 March 2010

Gilbert and George and Dimbers go through the motions in Seven Ages of Britain

Seven Ages of Britain began in the same week as A History of the World in 100 Objects on Radio 4. You wait a prodigiously long time for a massive cultural overview and then two come along at once. Do they think in a joined-up way about these things at the BBC? Or has this double helping been a sign of a wider moral and structural chaos that characterises the new world disorder? Last night David Dimbleby concluded his tour of two millennia of British art. It has,...

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The Culture Show: Henry Moore, BBC Two

Josh Spero Thursday, 18 March 2010

What emerges from tonight’s Culture Show on Henry Moore, which examines how the sculptor exploited the media (and vice versa), is not the difference between the media of sculpture and television but the similarity.

The Berlusconi Show, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Imagine if Rory Bremner had been banned from British television for the past 20 years, and Gordon Brown had put pressure on the BBC to get rid of Question Time because it had been critical of him. In the Italy of Silvio Berlusconi these things happen.

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Glee, E4

Adam Sweeting Monday, 15 March 2010

Rarely has a TV series been so easy to like and so tricky to define. If you shoved High School Musical, American Idol and The Breakfast Club in a blender, you'd be in the right ballpark, though you still wouldn't quite have captured Glee's unique tone of sweetness, campness, tragic teenage confusion and satire.

Requiem for Detroit?, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting Saturday, 13 March 2010

The only time I've ever been to Detroit was in 2004, in pursuit of assorted rock stars on the Vote for Change tour. Reader, it was weird. The atmosphere in the deserted streets was deathly, as if an invading army had swarmed into town, committed hideous atrocities and then moved on.