tv
The Great Offices of State, BBC TwoThursday, 18 February 2010
That title has been troubling me. The Great Offices of State is so stolid and dull, like an illustrated Ladybird children’s book from the 1950s - The Flags of the Commonwealth, or some such. And then you start trying to think of alternatives, a play on Yes, Minister perhaps, and you soon see that this flippancy wouldn't do justice to what is in fact a masterful achievement - the sort of television series that will (or should) be shown in schools and universities for... Read more... |
Skippy: Australia's First Superstar, BBC FourTuesday, 16 February 2010
Though children’s TV series Skippy The Bush Kangaroo was only in production from 1966 to 1968, it continues to resonate deafeningly with Australians, who are still apt to break into the theme tune or start doing kangaroo-hops round their living rooms. In fact it isn’t just Australians, since its 91 episodes were shown in 128 countries and dubbed into numerous exotic languages. Read more... |
Storyville: The Most Dangerous Man in America, BBC FourTuesday, 16 February 2010
On Daniel Ellsberg's first day in his new job at the Pentagon in 1964, working under Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred. Read more... |
Off Kilter, BBC TwoWednesday, 10 February 2010
Fife, like Scotland itself, is a mass of contradictions compressed into a relatively small space: beautiful beaches lie in the shadow of lowering tower blocks; the pink, plump prosperity of St Andrews rubs against the scar tissue of former mining towns like Methil; tourism nestles uncomfortably close to despair. Read more... |
Generation Jihad, BBC TwoTuesday, 09 February 2010
For a number of years I used to live opposite Abu Hamza. You didn’t see him much. I remember a Mercedes spilling devoutly robed football fans who had come to watch the game round his place when Iran played the USA in the 1998 World Cup. After 9/11, the street would occasionally fill with swooping fleets of police vehicles. Once they decanted a squad of space-suited forensics looking, presumably, for incendiary devices. Read more... |
Empire of the Seas, BBC TwoFriday, 05 February 2010
Dan Snow’s four-part history of the Royal Navy has been in many ways a marvellous thing, and a timely reminder of one of the central planks of our island story. At a moment when various brass hats are openly discussing the possibility of one of the UK’s armed services being dispensed with (and it won’t be the Army), Snow’s efforts may yet take on a greater significance than he imagined. Read more... |
Tower Block of Commons, Channel 4Tuesday, 02 February 2010
What do our elected representatives in Westminster know? Apart from, clearly, how to fill in an expenses claim form. You can file all the usual complaints about Tower Block of Commons, a series in which MPs take up residence in sink estates. It uses the tired old Wife Swap format of sadistically throwing its subjects in at the deep end to watch them sink or swim. The editing is visibly manipulative. Read more... |
Mo, Channel 4Sunday, 31 January 2010
It was a bit like the Ghost of Labour Past at Channel 4’s screening of this biopic of Mo Mowlam at BAFTA a couple of weeks ago. A cohort of party veterans turned out, including Charles Clarke, Neil Kinnock and Adam Ingram (a close ally of Mowlam’s and played by Gary Lewis in the film). There was even a brief introductory talk by "Batty" Hattie Harman, recalling how she first met Mowlam at Westminster. What a thrill that must have been for Mo. Read more... |
The Virtual Revolution, BBC TwoSaturday, 30 January 2010
If I wanted to be solipsistic about this, I could say that the opening episode of The Virtual Revolution, the new BBC Two series about the changes wrought by the internet, is also the story of theartsdesk.com. It certainly felt personal at times. But then we print journalists, now launched together into cyberspace, are but one (very important, naturally) sub-atomic particle of what is variously described here as "the fastest change since the Industrial Revolution" and... Read more... |
Mad Men, Series 3, BBC FourThursday, 28 January 2010
The second season of BBC Four’s artiest import began uncertainly, but season three took off at the gallop. The opening scene of the first episode prised open Don Draper’s closely guarded past with a flashback to his Depression-era infancy, depicting his adoption after the death of his mother (a prostitute). Then we jumped back to the present, where his wife Betty’s pregnancy picked up the childbirth theme. Read more... |
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